Class 




Book___ 



Copyright N^-^x 



k^ ^ ^ . 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



THE 
REMINISCENCES OF 
JAMES BURRILL ANGELL 

With Portrait. 12mo. 



LONGMANS. GREEN. AND CO. 



Selected 

Addresses 



BY 

JAMES BURRILL ANGELL 



LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO 

FOURTH AVENUE AND SOTH STREET. NEW YORK 

LONDON, BOMBAY. AND CALCUTTA 

1912 



H\" 






COPYRIGHT, 1912, RY 
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 



THB'PLIMPTON'FRHSS 

[ W • D • O 1 
NORWOOD'MASS'U'S'A 



^C!.A812945 



wr\. •» 



PREFACE 

1 HE publication last year of my volume of 
"Reminiscences" called forth requests to me for 
the publication of a volume containing some of 
the numerous Addresses which I had given dur- 
ing my Presidency of the University of Michi- 
gan. In compliance with these requests I have 
selected the Addresses here published. 

I have chosen first those which discuss the 
problems involved in the conduct of State Uni- 
versities, and especially of the University of 
Michigan, including a Memorial Discourse on 
Dr. Frieze, whose services to this University 
were of such marked value. 

I have chosen, secondly, a few Addresses which 
I hope may be of special interest to the students 
who sat under my instruction in the History of 
Diplomacy and in International Law. 

University of Michigan, 
March 18, 1912. 



Ivl 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I Inaugural Address 3 

University of Michigan, June 28, 1871 

II The Higher Education. A Plea for 

Making it Accessible to All . . 37 

III Commemorative Oration 63 

University of Michigan, 1887 

IV State Universities 103 

University of Missouri, 1895 

V The Old College and the New Univer- 
sity 129 

University of Chicago, 1899 

VI A Memorial Discourse : Henry Simmons 

Frieze 157 

VII The Influence of a Lawyer Outside of 

HIS Profession 191 

VIII The Inadequate Recognition of Diplo- 
matists BY Historians 219 

IX The European Concert and the Monroe 

Doctrine 237 

X Present Problems in the Relations of 

Missions to Governments .... 259 

XI The Turkish Capitulations .... 275 



[viil 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS 
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 

JUNE 28, 1871 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS 
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, 1871 

1 HIS University sustains vital relations to the 
State whose name it bears. Though it owes its 
chief resources to an endowment from Congress, its 
organization, its work, and its fortunes have been 
so largely under the control of the State that it may 
be justly termed the child of the State. If we may 
regard the repeated appropriations of money to the 
University by the Legislature as establishing the 
policy of the Commonwealth to recognize a parental 
duty to this school of learning, that simple fact 
implies a just and lofty conception of the function 
of the State and of the University. Such action 
argues large and generous ideas of the powers and 
duties of the State. It contemplates civil society 
as charged not merely with the negative work of 
repressing disorder and crime, but also with the higher 
positive office of promoting by all proper means the 
intellectual and the moral growth of the citizens. 
It repudiates the teachings of those shallow and 
short-sighted economists who would limit the public 
provision of educational facilities to the minimum 
•with which the State can possibly exist. It assumes 
that it is just and wise for the State to place the 

[3] 



ELECTED ADDRESSES 



means of obtaining generous culture within the reach 
of the humblest and poorest child upon its soil. 
It has lying behind it the old Aristotelian conception 
of political society, as existing "not merely for the 
sake of joint livelihood, but for honorable deeds." 
It is in complete harmony with John Milton's grand 
idea of the State as instituted for something far higher 
than mere material interests. Is not that the only 
conception of the State which Christian philosophy 
will justify.^ 

The distinguishing glory of several of the younger 
States of the Union is not found chiefly in that 
marvellous energy and unparalleled material pros- 
perity which are so often and so justly the theme of 
praise, but in that wise prevision with which, while 
roads and bridges and comfortable houses and many 
of the other necessities of civilized life were still 
unsupplied, they consecrated a liberal share of their 
wealth of lands to the endowment of schools. Many 
of the founders of these States are still Hving to enjoy 
the beneficent triumphs which are due to their fore- 
sight. They see about them not only thoroughly 
organized systems of common school education, but 
also colleges and universities, which may soon rival 
in the amplitude and completeness of their outfit 
the oldest and strongest in the nation. As we gather 
here with glad hearts on this festival day, we cannot 
but recognize it as a fresh honor to the State that on 
yonder Campus a new and spacious hall is soon to 
lift its fair proportions towards the skies to testify, 

[41 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 1871 

SO long as it stands, to the abiding and increasing 
interest of the State in the welfare of this Institution 
— an interest evinced not more by the liberality of 
the legislative appropriation than by the heartiness 
and promptness with which it was granted. 

If the State, which thus establishes and sustains 
its University, shows a high ideal of work, so must 
the University, which worthily serves such a State, 
be ever inspired by the loftiest conceptions of its 
duty. In training the citizens, who are to shape 
the destinies of the State, it must aspire to the Mil- 
tonian conception of education, and do its utmost to 
fit them "to perform justly, skilfully and magnan- 
imously all the offices, both private and public, 
of peace and war." It was with no exaggerated 
estimate of the functions and power of a university 
that Stein and WilKam von Humboldt and Niebuhr 
and Schleiermacher and Savigny and their coadju- 
tors laid the foundations of that splendid school 
at Berlin as the mightiest instrumentality in lifting 
Prussia from her deep abasement to that height of 
power from which she could look down in defiance 
upon her conqueror from beyond the Rhine. Could 
the world ask for a more brilliant vindication than 
it has just witnessed, of the wisdom of Prussia and 
the other German States, which have so generously 
sustained their great schools of learning? It was the 
scholarship and genius and discipline of Kant and 
Nitzsch and Mueller and Vangerow and Liebig and 
such as they, no less than the administrative ability 

[5] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



of Von Roon and the strategy of Von Moltke, which 
bore the banners of the Fatherland in triumph across 
the murderous ravines of Gravelotte and encom- 
passed Sedan in the fatal walls of fire. The Univer- 
sity must interpret its vital connection with the 
State as a call to the largest and best work attainable 
with its means. In that call it must find the stimulus 
to all strenuous endeavor. It may determine the 
culture, the civiHzation, nay, it may save the very 
life of the State, and is justly held responsible for 
the faithful discharge of its sacred duty. 

The University in performing this work must 
have many fruitful relations besides these to the 
State which nourishes it. It cannot lead a life of 
isolation. It cannot bound its vision or its work by 
the narrow lines of a State or of a nation. It is a 
part of the great world of scholars. It hospitably 
flings its gates wide open to all seekers after knowl- 
edge, wherever their home. Remembering that it is 
one of the great sisterhood of schools, it constantly 
welcomes the light which the experience of other 
universities may shed upon its path. The unprece- 
dented interest, which is felt both in Europe and 
in this country, in determining the aims of higher 
education, and the best methods of conducting it, 
lends a new charm and importance to the life of 
every university. It gives fresh impulse and enthu- 
siasm to us all to feel that the scholars of every 
nation are profoundly concerned in our work, and 
are aiding in solving the educational problems which 

[61 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 1871 

are tasking our powers. Never before was the high 
calling of the teacher so delightful to the true man, 
who has his mind open to the suggestions which come 
pouring in upon him from every quarter, and who 
knows that the whole world is ready to weigh with 
candor any worthy suggestions which he may be 
prepared to offer. The public mind is now in a 
plastic, impressible state, and every vigorous college, 
nay, every capable worker, may help to shape its 
decisions upon education. 

In England the discussion which has been going 
on for the last twenty-five years concerning reform 
in the great schools and universities continues with 
unabated zeal, grows more and more searching, and 
engages the most gifted minds. The ablest scholars 
are employed by Parliament to expose to the light of 
day the defects of the English schools, and to hunt 
through the world for ideas which may ^ serve to 
improve the English methods of instruction. Almost 
every leading man in Great Britain has been con- 
strained to discuss in some form the educational 
questions of the day. It is fresh in the recollection 
of all how the present brilliant and eccentric Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer has caricatured the Oxford 
training in that fascinating style which he owes in 
so great measure to that very training, and has 
pierced his venerable mother with arrows which he 
drew from her own quiver. Mr. Froude left his 
portrait of Elizabeth unfinished on his easel and 
journeyed to Scotland to astonish the world with 

17] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



his commendation of what the Germans might call 
a bread and butter education. While Oxford 
scholars were disparaging the classics, Mr. Mill, the 
great utilitarian, came forward to delight and 
instruct his hearers with a hearty recognition of 
the value of classical culture, and with a most admi- 
rable presentation of the relations of the various 
departments of human knowledge. The echoes of 
the recent discussions in the House of Lords on the 
influence of Oxford life on religion have hardly died 
away on our ears. Carlyle, Bain, Spencer, Farrar, 
Huxley, Arnold, and how many others have been 
making invaluable contributions to the elucidation 
of the questions which are raised in the work of 
education. 

Germany was never more busy than now in per- 
fecting her systems of higher education. Almost 
the first utterance of the French Academy of Sci- 
ence, after the fall of the late imperial government 
permitted freedom of speech, was an urgent demand 
for the reorganization of the University to carry 
the higher education of France up towards the 
German standard. Austria is showing that the secu- 
larization of education has opened a new career to 
her schools. And Italy is striving to renew the 
faded glory of those ancient universities which once 
drew thousands of students from the whole civilized 
world. 

If we turn to this country, we see that during the 
present generation there has been more discussion 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 1871 

of the problems of collegiate and university training 
than had been known before since the planting of 
the New England colonies. College life in the main 
flowed on in one unbroken current from the founda- 
tion of Harvard College till the fifth decade of this 
century. Our colleges were constructed on the 
English model, and were all conducted in essentially 
the same spirit. There was nowhere such question- 
ing of the wisdom of the one course as was raised 
so long ago as Bacon's time concerning the English 
colleges. 

During the last twenty years not only educational 
journals, but the secular and the religious journals, 
the magazines and reviews, college faculties and 
corporations, the patrons of colleges, and all that 
great company of people who are interested in the 
character of our higher education, have been vig- 
orously arguing to determine what the American 
college should aim to be and to do. This has been 
a period of groping, of theorizing, of experimenting, 
rather than of confident progress in any one path, 
which all would be ready to approve as the true one. 
Perhaps the element of highest value in this move- 
ment has been the wellnigh universal avowal of 
the belief that there is something yet to be learned 
concerning the aims and methods of higher education. 
This expectant, receptive, hopeful attitude of the 
guides of academic work has been itself a prophecy 
and a guaranty of improvement. Stolid compla- 
cency in a stereotyped system is the one insuperable 

f9l 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



barrier to advance. Such epochs of nascent, for- 
mative life, what the Germans would call eras of 
becoming, of development, are always the most in- 
tensely interesting in history. 

And it is in precisely this epoch that this Uni- 
versity has been growing from infancy to maturity, 
and it is its glory and the glory of the wise and 
good men who have shaped its fortunes that it 
has played a most important and honorable part 
in solving the collegiate problems of the day. Its 
great influence in academic circles is admitted even 
by those who do not sympathize with the views 
which have here been cherished. It is too early 
to sum up the arguments in the discussions which 
have been carried on by college men for the last 
few years, and to expect that all will acquiesce in 
any verdict which can yet be rendered. But twenty 
years suffice to show whether there is a real drift 
of the main tide of intelligent public opinion in 
any direction. And there can be no doubt that 
there has been a real drift towards some of the 
important positions early taken by this University. 
Two of these positions in particular may be 
named: first, the provision for a choice between 
different courses of study, and secondly, the fur- 
nishing of larger opportunities in the Modern Lan- 
guages, in History, and in the Natural Sciences than 
were formerly afforded. Nearly every college in the 
land has made changes in its plan of work which 
recognize in a greater or less degree the desirable- 

[10] 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 1871 

ness of accomplishing these ends. It may be fairly 
claimed that the satisfactory results of the experi- 
ments here have not been without a decided influ- 
ence upon some of the older institutions of the 
East, while they have evidently determined the form 
of the State Universities which have been springing 
up in the West. These are facts on which this 
University may fairly congratulate itself. These are 
triumphs for which it should gratefully cherish the 
names of my learned and efficient predecessors and 
of their faithful coadjutors in the Board of Regents 
and in the Faculty. 

But never in this era of educational discussion 
and experimental activity has there been a moment 
when the University could hope to learn so much 
from looking abroad as at the present, or when its 
own example could so profoundly affect other schools 
of learning; for at no time have the colleges and 
universities been so energetic in the trial of various 
methods, and at no time have they been so ready to 
welcome new ideas of college work, from whatever 
source they may come. While our contributions to 
the solution of all the problems of university life 
will be measured at their true value, we may perhaps 
well remember that academic circles just now watch 
with especial interest for the light which our expe- 
rience may furnish on two points: first, the conse- 
quences in the long run of the dependence of the 
University on the State, and secondly, the results 
of the admission of women to the University. 

[11] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



It is still asked with some solicitude at the older 
denominational colleges whether the State can be 
relied on to furnish the needed support for this large 
and growing University, and whether the University 
can be guarded against the perils of partisan strife. 
The rapid progress of the Institution thus far, in 
spite of its various and grave embarrassments, has 
been a series of happy surprises to many who have 
watched it with interest. We at least will not doubt 
that the wisdom and the generosity of the State 
to whose usefulness and renown it has contributed 
so much, even in its brief career, will make its future 
yet richer in beneficence than its past, and will 
remove from the public mind every lingering doubt 
of the feasibility of building up a State University, 
which shall flourish and expand as long as the State 
shall prosper. 

If the admission of women to this University 
is followed by no undesirable results of impor- 
tance, then this action will, in my opinion, have 
a more marked influence on the colleges and pro- 
fessional schools of the country than any other 
event in the history of the Institution has ever had. 
The question of opening the halls of colleges to both 
sexes, which seems to be practically settled in the 
West, is attracting deep attention in the East. I 
think I do not err in saying that the number of 
academic men in that section of the country who 
are in favor of this measure is rapidly increasing. 
I believe that when it can be said with confidence 

[12] 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 1871 

that the University of Michigan feels itself justified 
in declaring the experiment beyond dispute success- 
ful, the doors of several Eastern colleges will open 
to young women. And it is not extravagant to 
believe that the effect may be felt at some of the 
great European schools. The relation of this Uni- 
versity to its sister institutions of high grade was 
therefore never so important as it is to-day. It 
becomes us to remember the high responsibility which 
this fact lays upon us. Noblesse oblige. 

Honorable as has been the history of the Univer- 
sity, there is no friend of it who does not wish to 
see it doing yet higher and larger work. The desire 
of intelligent men throughout the country for a few 
American universities which shall be to our high 
schools and even to some of our colleges what the 
universities in Europe are to the secondary schools 
of England, the lycees of France, and the gymnasia 
of Germany is so strong and pervading that it may 
be regarded as a prediction of the upbuilding of such 
institutions of highest grade. If the saying which 
Goethe somewhere gives us, "what one longs for in 
youth, one will have in advanced years," has any 
foundation of truth in the experience of Germans, 
it has yet more in the life of this nation whose energy 
makes a wish the prophecy of attainment. We 
must have these universities in time. But they 
cannot be imported ready-made. They cannot be 
extemporized. Like governments, they must grow. 
Most of them will be developed from existing insti- 

[13] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



tutions. Their roots will be found in the colleges. 
It would not be dilBScult to indicate which colleges 
in New England give the largest promise of reaching 
the true university standard of attainment. 

I hope it may not be deemed improper for me to 
say, as one who has not been identified with this 
University in the past, that either the State or the 
University will be unworthy the vantage ground 
which has been gained here with so much money 
and toil, if this is not the first of the Western 
schools to satisfy the demand for the highest order 
of university work. Never for an instant should 
legislators or citizens or Regents or Faculty or 
students lose sight of that goal. Till that end is 
reached, our opportunities are not seized. Noth- 
ing less than that must content us. Precisely how 
or when this or any other American institution is 
to attain this development, or exactly what will 
be the organization and all the methods of the 
enlarged universities, we may not now be able to 
say. We Americans must feel our way carefully. 
As Lord Bacon says, "we must use Argus' hun- 
dred eyes before we raise one of Briareus' hundred 
hands." The work is one which requires great 
wisdom and patience. 

Let us carefully guard against one peril. While 
aiming to reach university work at last, let us not 
underrate or neglect the strictly collegiate work to 
which the academic Department must for some 
time be mainly confined. Excessive haste and 

[14] 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 1871 

impatient ambition may spoil good colleges without 
making even poor universities. It needs still how- 
ever to be remembered in this country that calling 
an institution a university does not make it so. 
Neither do buildings, however imposing, nor endow- 
ments, however splendid, constitute a university. 
Nor does it convert a college into a university to 
abolish recitations and give all the instruction by 
lectures. I fear that the public do not sufficiently 
understand that the essential thing in a university 
is men, both in the students' seats and in the pro- 
fessors' chairs. Students who possess sufficient 
maturity of body, of mind, and of character, and 
sufficient intellectual furniture and training, to carry 
on with earnestness and persistence a high order of 
work till they can reap 

" A harvest of wise purposes 
Sown in the fruitful furrows of the mind;" 

and instructors who are competent to guide and in- 
spire such students, these make a university. Wher- 
ever such pupils and such teachers are pursuing the 
most generous culture of a civilized age, there are 
the essential constituents of a university, though, as 
in Bologna in the thirteenth century, the instruction 
is given in private houses of most modest structure, 
or though masters and disciples dwell in hovels of 
osier and thatch, like Abelard and his followers on 
the wild banks of the Ardrissan. The youthful 
Plato hanging on the lips of the barefooted Socrates 
in the streets of Athens, — can we find in the world 

[15] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



a picture of a more fruitful university culture than 
that? Give us Platos as professors and Aristotles 
as pupils, and though yonder halls be razed to the 
ground and our endowments swallowed up by 
disaster, we can still have in this quiet inland city 
a University which shall draw the studious youth 
even from beyond the utmost seas and shed its 
benign light over the whole world. 

How many of our well-meaning countrymen have 
given their tens of thousands of dollars for the 
material homes of colleges and universities, and have 
made no adequate provision for securing the most 
gifted and devoted teachers? When will even good 
men learn that to endow a university with brains and 
heart, and not alone with bricks and mortar, is the 
part of true wisdom? The ideal teacher is a rare 
man, for whose coming, when he is found, the Uni- 
versity and the State should give thanks. It seems 
to have dawned but recently on men's minds that 
teaching in the college or university is a special 
profession, in which as a rule a man can no more 
attain high usefulness without natural aptitude and 
appropriate training than he can in any of the other 
learned professions. 

A man may have eminent success as a lawyer 
or a clergyman or a literary writer or even as a 
school-teacher, and may yet prove a very indiffer- 
ent professor. If he is to succeed in university 
work, he must have, first, in the very make of 
his mind and soul, the divine call to teach, and 

[16] 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 1871 

secondly, he should have a large general culture 
and a thorough special training in his own depart- 
ment. Unless he has the first of these qualifications, 
no degree of excellence in the second will crown him 
with success. He may be as learned as Scaliger or 
Erasmus, but if he has not in him the power of kin- 
dling another mind with the fire which burns in his 
own, if he cannot bring his soul into such close and 
loving contact with that of a receptive pupil that 
the latter shall be stirred by his impulses and fired 
with his enthusiasms and imbued with his passionate 
love of the truth he teaches, he has not in the highest 
sense the teaching power. The best part of the help 
which a genuine teacher gives to his pupil often con- 
sists not in the formal information he communicates 
on this or that topic, but in the magnetism, the 
inspiration, the impartation of his own scholarly 
and truth-loving spirit. To this enkindling power 
he should add a kind of perpetual youthfulness, a 
freshness of spirit, which keeps living and warm his 
sympathies with the young, and which enables him 
to see things from the student's point of view as 
well as from the professor's. He must also possess 
the ability and the desire to be ever learning. When 
a man stops acquiring knowledge, it is time for him 
to stop teaching. He cannot produce attractive 
and nutritious food for his pupils by incessantly 
threshing, in the same monotonous way, the very 
same straw which he has been turning over and 
pounding with his pedagogic flail for an indefinite 

[17] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



period. With this rare combination of talent, 
scholarship, and temperament he must also unite a 
pure and manly character and a certain heroic 
disregard of the high pecuniary remuneration which 
other callings in life offer to men like him. 

Tell me if men who have wretchedly failed in 
other professions are likely to have sat for the por- 
trait I have attempted to sketch .^^ Tell me if men 
who are worthy of this vocation of the teacher do 
not deserve to be encouraged and honored and 
rewarded by the State which they serve .^^ As Mil- 
ton says, after completing his scheme of work for 
the school, "Only I believe that this is not a bow 
for every man to shoot in that counts himself a 
teacher, but will require sinews almost equal to 
those which Homer gave Ulysses." Happy is this 
University that it has had and still has so many 
such men in its corps of teachers. To them more 
than to any peculiarity of your methods is due 
whatever large and lasting influence the University 
has exerted. 

Men are of more consequence than methods. 
Small men will accomplish little with the best 
methods. Men of large scope and culture will do 
much with any method which they will be willing 
to adopt. There is much discussion just now con- 
cerning collegiate methods, and it bids fair to be 
fruitful of good results. But under any system of 
college life which is likely to be followed in this 
country, the best work will probably be done where 

[18] 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 1871 

the students are best prepared for their study and 
the professors best prepared to instruct. As the 
soul of a nation is in the spirit of the people rather 
than in the words of their constitution, so the soul 
of a university is in the men who compose it rather 
than in its plan of organization. If it is to have 
the highest success, it must be able to command 
the services of the choicest teachers and to remu- 
nerate them so that they can give their best vigor to 
their professorial work. 

If now we are to lift the grade of university work, 
we must lift the grade of preparatory work and 
receive our students only at a more advanced stage 
of training than they at present reach before entering 
the Freshman class. I learn from the interesting 
Report of President Frieze that the average age of 
the students who are admitted here is very nearly 
that of the university students in Germany. Could 
they thoroughly accomplish the collegiate work of the 
first two years before commencing here, we might 
make their course compare favorably with that of 
the European universities. For the superiority 
which the graduates from the German gymnasia 
have over our Junior classes in the knowledge of the 
classics would be, I think, in part at least counter- 
balanced by a superiority of the American student 
over the German in a larger general knowledge of 
matters beyond the range of his school studies, and 
in a greater readiness in the practical application of 
his learning. 

[19] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



Now the addition of the studies of the first two 
years to the preparatory course would be no greater 
advance upon the present work of the schools than 
has actually been achieved since the beginning of the 
century. Already there are not a few schools in the 
country which can give and would gladly give the in- 
struction of the Freshman year. The time is not 
distant when the better and stronger institutions can 
safely push up their requirements for admission to the 
standard now reached at the beginning of the Sopho- 
more year, and I am confident that the day is not very 
remote when they can secure yet higher attainments. 
The teachers of academies and high schools are gener- 
ally more than willing to do their part in accomplish- 
ing the result, since the character of their work and 
the tone of their schools are thereby necessarily raised. 

So far as I have observed, this enlargement of 
preparatory work is easily attainable, and is even 
more necessary in the scientific than in the classical 
department of our colleges. The mathematical course, 
at least up to trigonometry, the elements of physiol- 
ogy, botany, and physics, some help in French, and 
a year's study or more of Latin may now be furnished 
in many of the high schools of New England and, I 
doubt not, in many schools in the West. So much, 
I think, it would be very desirable to secure at an 
early day from those who pursue scientific courses. 
The Latin indeed may be waived for a time, but the 
best scientific schools abroad and here are agreed 
that it is very helpful to their pupils. 

[20] 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 1871 

To secure this elevation of our work there must be 
the heartiest co-operation of the University and the 
schools. It would have been a happy completion of 
the public school system of the State if an organic 
connection like that between the German Universi- 
ties and the gymnasia had been established. But 
there may be such a virtual, if not a formal, con- 
nection, and to accomplish this end the University 
should spare no efforts. 

It must be confessed that generally the schools 
in this country are quite as ready to furnish the 
advanced instruction as colleges are to insist on it 
with rigor as the indispensable condition of admis- 
sion. The courage of most college faculties or 
corporations wavers when a considerable number 
of applicants for entrance are about to be cut off 
by a new rule. Of course good sense must be 
used in deciding how fast and how far the standard 
shall be raised. But the courageous course here as 
in other matters is often the best rewarded. As a 
rule the colleges whose classes are increasing most 
rapidly are those whose requirements for admission 
and whose scale of work are highest. The better 
and more aspiring students justly conclude that 
from such institutions they will receive the most 
benefit. Certain it is that the best interests of this 
University and of good learning require us to make 
increasing, earnest, and judicious efforts to push the 
work of the preparatory schools to a higher and 
higher plane. 

[21] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



If properly supported, the University can by wise 
and persistent endeavor continually approach its 
ideal of giving the largest general culture and the 
most thorough and extended special training in 
technical and professional study. It would seem 
superfluous to remark that, at least throughout the 
undergraduate department, the instruction should 
be so shaped as to make the development and 
discipline of the faculties the primary object, were 
it not questioned by some whether it is expedient 
or even practicable to conduct such scientific courses 
as are given here with that high aim. Now without 
opening the vexed question of the relative value of 
the culture which flows from the humanities and 
of that which is given by the natural sciences, every 
one must admit that these latter studies can be so 
pursued as to give admirable training to the faculties 
of observation, imagination, and reasoning. It is 
not easy to see how they can be eflSciently taught 
without producing that result. They should be 
taught with a disciplinary as well as a practical aim, 
because thus will the most valuable practical results 
be achieved. For what is disciplinary instruction 
in a science except instruction in the processes of 
observation, induction, and deduction, by which the 
principles of the science are established or verified, 
and such instruction as shall lead the student to 
perform those processes himself .^^ Shall we be told 
that the student will be best or more rapidly fitted 
for the practical application of the science by using 

[22] 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 1871 

formulae and facts as his tools, without attempting 
to comprehend the underlying principles? 

To ask the question in this presence is to answer 
it, and I appeal to any teachers of natural science to 
tell me whether the clear perception by the pupil of 
the practical bearing of his study upon the work 
of his life ever lessens his interest in the fundamental 
principles of it, or weakens his susceptibility to the 
culture to be derived from a thorough comprehen- 
sion of those principles? Other things being equal, 
will not those persons who are most interested in 
a study receive the best culture from it? Only in 
this possibility of imparting genuine culture to 
students by the use of the mathematics and the 
natural sciences can be found the intellectual justi- 
fication of the plan pursued here of uniting classical 
and scientific students in the same classes. If the 
scientific and mathematical training of any candidate 
for graduation has not fitted him to use all the 
faculties, which have been appealed to in his course, 
for effective service outside as well as inside of his 
particular profession, then it has failed of its highest 
usefulness, and his profession will be exercised by 
him only as a trade. 

Our schools of law and medicine have contributed 
much to the renown of the University. Some of 
the best professional schools in the country are, like 
the colleges, trying important experiments in courses 
and methods of instruction, and these will receive 
the attention of our vigilant Faculties. It is uni- 

[23] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



versally confessed, I believe, that it would be ad- 
vantageous to secure some larger qualifications in 
those who are allowed to matriculate in the American 
schools than are now required of them. At present 
the obstacles to such a reform seem to be very grave. 
But we must hold ourselves ever ready to take such 
action in common with other guides of professional 
learning as is worthy of our position and history. 

It is to be hoped that we may soon induce a 
considerable number of young men to pursue what 
may be termed graduate work in other departments 
besides those of law and medicine. The increasing 
desire for large attainments in linguistic studies and 
in the natural sciences, the pressing necessity of 
training a numerous class for the chairs of instruc- 
tors in our higher schools and colleges, the facilities 
which we have for beginning this work of advanced 
instruction, and the example of the leading univer- 
sities in the Eastern States are so many arguments 
in favor of trying this important step in genuine 
university work, whenever students are ready to 
receive this help at our hands. 

There are other studies in which our graduates 
may perhaps yet be led to labor for some time. For 
instance, the increasing number of alumni who are 
entering the important profession of journalism, 
which is constantly drawing men of higher talent and 
attainments to its service, and which is certainly 
second in influence to none of the so-called learned 
professions, might profitably pursue special studies 

[24] 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 1871 

in history, literature, political economy, political 
philosophy, and international law. While it may 
perhaps be as truly said of the great editor as of 
the great poet, nascitur, non fit, still the truth should 
be recognized both by students and by universities 
that most valuable preliminary training may be fur- 
nished for the duties of the journalistic profession. 

Many, who are best fitted to judge of the intellec- 
tual needs of our country, are so deeply impressed 
with the importance of securing advanced instruc- 
tion for our most promising students that they are 
recommending men of generosity to endow fellow- 
ships, which shall enable a certain number of picked 
scholars to prolong their course of study. This is a 
kind of benefaction which may well claim the atten- 
tion of those who wish to devise liberal things for 
the young men and the young women of the West. 
Some of the Eastern colleges have already received 
such an accession to their resources and are beginning 
to perceive the beneficent results. 

May we not indulge the hope that not only in 
this way, but in various ways, the University may 
profit by the generosity of her sons and of many other 
friends of sound learning.^ She is, and perhaps 
must be, dependent on the State for her chief help. 
But now that for more than a score of years she has 
been sending forth her sons into all honorable callings 
and professions, may she not reasonably expect that 
those who have been crowned with prosperity will 
rejoice to testify their indebtedness to her by in- 

[25] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 

creasing her power and usefulness? Many colleges 
find this grateful and active help of their alumni a 
perennial source of refreshing and strength. 

The Library, the Museum of Art, and the Observ- 
atory already bear witness to the deep interest of 
large-hearted men in this University. For some 
years successive graduating classes have been leav- 
ing behind them tokens of their generous and filial 
love for the University, and to my mind there is and 
can be no more convincing proof of the healthy 
life of the Institution. The benediction which her 
parting sons pronounce is at once a benison and a 
prevalent prayer for future blessings. These gifts 
of our young friends, we may well believe, are the 
first-fruits of that harvest with which the University 
shall be enriched by private munificence. Let it 
not be thought that the aid furnished by the State 
leaves no room for such munificence. Any one 
familiar with the University can readily suggest 
uses to which benefactions may be wisely devoted. 
Endowments of professorships, a gymnasium, which 
shall furnish opportunities for physical training, a 
building suited to accommodate the Library and 
the Art collections, a Laboratory with the needed 
apparatus for experimental instruction in physics, 
these, the most casual observer would say, are much 
to be desired. 

There is no more creditable chapter in American 
annals than that which records the liberality of our 
citizens to our institutions of learning. Never before 

[26] 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 1871 

has that Hberality been so marked as during the last 
ten years. It may now be accepted as a settled 
principle in American life that no college of estab- 
lished strength and reputation, which is so con- 
ducted as to deserve to have its life continued, 
shall long lack for the supply of its substantial 
wants. But it is of vital consequence that this Uni- 
versity, or any one which deserves the public favor, 
should be constantly improving in some respect. 
If it is resting on its laurels, if it is sitting down 
satisfied with its past achievements, if it is not 
incessantly asking "how can I do more or better 
work," it does not deserve to be favored or helped. 
It is in danger of dying of dry-rot. It is not well 
to have spasmodic periods of advance followed by 
decline. Every year should bring some gain. In 
this day of unparalleled activity in college life, the 
institution which is not steadily advancing is cer- 
tainly falling behind. 

An argument for generous and increasing aid to 
the stronger colleges is found in one embarrassment 
to which they are just now more subjected than the 
weaker ones. This embarrassment consists in the 
great increase of students, whose numbers often mul- 
tiply more rapidly than the resources of the colleges. 
The tendency to centralization which is seen in many 
characteristics of American life is notably prominent 
in the colleges. Students are more and more inclined 
to resort to the institutions which have large classes 
and resources. This subjects such colleges and uni- 

[27] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



versities to a new stimulus, but also to new responsi- 
bilities, often to new embarrassments. The stimulus 
must incite them to shoulder the responsibilities with 
courage and to push through or over all the obstacles. 
No better illustration of such action could be found 
than is afforded by the history of this University 
during its years of wonderful growth. With heroic 
endeavor and untiring patience its officers have met 
the rapidly increasing demand upon them with a 
success which even they would not have dared to 
predict. Still the number of applicants for admission 
swells year by year, and no reason appears w^hy it 
may not continue to increase so long as the University 
continues to multiply its attractions and enlarge its 
facilities for instruction. 

This fact should not only spur the instructors to 
their best efforts, but also should move the patrons 
of the University to give us the means with which 
to discharge the duty that the very prominence of 
the University lays upon us. No one would wish 
us to fall back to the second rank of higher schools. 
No one ought to be satisfied with our remaining where 
we are. The steady enlargement and improvement 
of the work of a university like this means constant 
and important increase of resources. 

This is a fact which we may ask the State and all 
friends of the University to bear ever in mind. The 
State as the great patron and protector of the 
University has a right to ask that it do the best work 
possible with the means at its command, that with 

[281 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 187 1 

enlarged resources its activity and usefulness be 
increased, that it do not become the refuge of 
dawdhng dilettanti or of curious pedants, either as 
students or teachers, that the Christian spirit, which 
pervades the laws, the customs, and the life of the 
State, shall shape and color the life of the University, 
that a lofty, earnest, but catholic and unsectarian 
Christian tone shall characterize the culture which 
is here imparted. It may fairly demand that the 
University do not, as some institutions have done, 
when they have waxed strong and rich, shut itself 
off from living sympathy and contact with the great 
body of honest, toiling men who help to sustain it, 
but that it show in the lives of its graduates how its 
culture enriches and strengthens and adorns the 
whole life of the State, that it make it plainly mani- 
fest to each intelligent citizen that every appropria- 
tion to the University sows seeds in the most fruitful 
of all soils, and swells that rich harvest of intellectual 
force and manly character which is the greatest 
treasure and highest glory of any commonwealth. 

The right of the State to ask all this implies also 
the right of the University to expect that the State 
will furnish the most efficient aid which it can afford. 
Nor should this aid be regarded as a charity, any 
more than the appropriations for public schools or 
for the support of the judiciary. If the State has 
deemed it wise to found and aid the University, it is 
the part of common prudence and good sense for the 
State to sustain it generously and to give it the 

[29] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



greatest practicable efficiency. A crippled insti- 
tution, which can only half do its work, is hardly 
worth supporting at all. In maintaining schools 
and colleges liberality is true economy. 

Again, the University cannot do its work with the 
highest success Unless it have a certain degree of 
independence and self-control. It has therefore a 
right to expect that this privilege will be conceded to 
it. Written law or the unwritten law of common 
consent should shield it from the sudden outbursts 
of partisan passion and from the assaults of designing 
men. It must be able to have some fixed and definite 
plan and purpose running on through a series of 
years. It must have stability of character and life. 
The general nature and the details of its work should 
be determined by those who are charged with the 
immediate responsibility of administering its affairs. 
No other men in the whole State can have so deep 
a personal interest in securing its prosperity as the 
Regents and the Faculty. The brilliant success 
which they have achieved for it in the past justifies 
the belief that the direction of its policy cannot be 
confided to better hands than theirs. 

No undue restraints should be laid upon the intel- 
lectual freedom of the teachers. No man worthy to 
hold a chair here will work in fetters. In choosing 
members of the Faculty the greatest care should be 
taken to secure gifted, earnest, reverent men, whose 
mental and moral qualities will fit them to prepare 
their pupils for manly and womanly work in pro- 

[30] 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 1871 

moting our Christian civilization. But never insist 
on their pronouncing the shibboleths of sect or party. 
So only can we train a generation of students to 
catholic, candid, truth-loving habits of mind and 
tempers of heart. 

The State and the University should feel that their 
interests are identical. The prosperity of the Uni- 
versity is bound up in that of the State. Michigan 
cannot grow stronger, wiser, and happier without 
strengthening her principal seat of learning. The 
University is therefore constrained by every motive 
of enlightened self-regard, as well as by her unques- 
tioned loyalty, to remain true to the interests of the 
State. 

On the other hand, the State can hardly over- 
estimate her indebtedness to the University. This 
school has shed its blessings upon all classes and 
professions of men. It has given the best culture of 
the times to the poor as well as to the rich. In this 
respect its bounty has been even more marked than 
that of the common school. For hardly any boy is 
so poor that he might not, if necessary, obtain at 
his own cost the rudiments of education. But how 
few of our young men who have, almost without 
price, enjoyed the benefits of the ample resources 
of this University could possibly have paid the 
actual cost of their collegiate education. A great 
University like this is thus in one sense the most 
democratic of all institutions and so best deserving 
of the support of the State. This school has flooded 

[31] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 

with its light and strengthened with its strength all 
the subordinate schools. It has helped to lift the 
whole system of education in the State through the 
agency of the parents, teachers, and superintendents, 
who have carried from its halls lofty ideals of in- 
tellectual work. It has won for the State an enviable 
renown among all friends of learning in this land, 
and has caused the name of Michigan to be spoken 
with gratifying praise beyond the Atlantic. 

All history attests that there is no instrumentality 
by which modern nations have done so much to in- 
crease their strength and happiness, to perpetuate 
the influence of their ideas, to win the honor and 
gratitude of mankind, as by their great schools 
of learning. Bologna, Salerno, and Padua thus 
stretched the sway of Italy far into transalpine 
lands. Paris has for centuries been the intellectual 
exchange of Europe. Oxford and Cambridge have 
helped to mould the lives and daily thought of every 
one of us. The sceptre of Berlin and of Bonn rules 
over a territory a hundred-fold wider than that which 
Bismarck has laid at the feet of his Imperial master. 
Dynasties come and go, Bourbons, Napoleons, Tu- 
dors, Hohenstaufens appear and disappear, kingdoms 
and States rise and fall, but amid all the vicissitudes 
of earthly affairs the great universities are the most 
vital and enduring of all human institutions. 

This University is yet comparatively in its infancy. 
Citizens of Michigan, you who are now building its 
walls are really laying foundations. Let no penny- 

[32] 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 1871 

wise economy tempt you to use untempered mortar. 
Divine Providence has opened to you a golden oppor- 
tunity, such as comes not often in the history of a 
State. Seize upon it with thanksgiving. Show by 
the largeness of your work that you appreciate the 
call, and the favor of Heaven shall rest upon you and 
generations shall rise up to call you blessed. 



[33] 



II 



THE HIGHER EDUCATION 

A PLEA FOR MAKING IT ACCESSIBLE 
TO ALL 



JUNE 26, 1879 

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE ANNUAL 

COMMENCEMENT OF THE 

UNIVERSITY OF 

MICHIGAN 



II 



THE HIGHER EDUCATION: A PLEA FOR 
MAKING IT ACCESSIBLE TO ALL 

Until within a few days w^e have cherished the 
hope of Hstening at this hour to a distinguished 
scholar and orator from a sister State.^ But, un- 
happily, our hope has been disappointed. In this 
exigency the kindly urgency of my associates in the 
University Senate has constrained me very unwill- 
ingly and after hurried preparation to offer you some 
thoughts which, I trust, may be found not unfitting 
the occasion. 

No one here can regret more profoundly than I 
the necessity which calls you to listen to a voice so 
familiar as mine and so suggestive, I fear, to my 
younger friends, of the recitation room and the daily 
routine of college life, rather than of the joys, the 
enthusiasms, the inspirations which this great festal 
day of the University should aw^aken in all hearts. 
Fortunately the success of this occasion does not 
depend on me. It is already assured in the spectacle, 
which has so perennial an interest, of a goodly 
company of young men and young women appearing 
upon this stage to receive their testimonials of work 
faithfully accomplished, and turning away to confront 

* James A. Garfield, afterwards President. 

[37] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



the stern duties of life, in this vast concourse of 
alumni and other friends of the University, and in 
the devotion to the dear mother of her children, 
who gather from distant homes under her ample roof- 
tree, while their hearts run together in the joy of a 
common love to her. 

As we assemble on these high days at these shrines 
of learning, we instinctively call to mind those noble 
and far-sighted statesmen to whose wise and generous 
forethought the greatness and the very existence 
of this Institution are due. It should be one of our 
sacred duties, as well as delights, to imbue ourselves 
with the spirit in which they wrought for the founding 
of a free school of letters, science, and arts. 

The story of this work is so familiar that I need 
not repeat it in detail. But let us keep clearly 
before us the important fact that the fathers who 
drafted and adopted that great charter of liberty and 
learning for the Northwest, the Ordinance of 1787, 
in which they declared that "schools and the means 
of education should forever be encouraged," carried, 
in their conception of a State, a distinct idea of a 
richly endowed university as a part of its furniture 
and its life. They and their successors in Congress 
provided for the support of such institutions in the 
nascent States of this region with what was then so 
munificent generosity that clearly they expected the 
higher education would be within the easy reach 
of all. It may well be that even in their brightest 
dreams of the future of the territory which they 

[38] 



THE HIGHER EDUCATION 



were consecrating to freedom, to religion, and to 
intelligence, they did not see that in less than a 
century, as the fruitage of their sowing, in all these 
Northwestern States schools and colleges should 
spring up like the stars in the sky for number. Still 
less, perhaps, did they imagine that before the cen- 
tennial celebration of the birth of the nation there 
should arise and flourish in this State of Michigan, 
then an almost untrodden wilderness, fringed by a 
few weak settlements on the river and the lakes, 
a university which should surpass in the number 
of its students and teachers, the amplitude of its 
endowments and the wide reach of its influence, the 
Harvard, the Yale, the Princeton, and the William 
and Mary of their day, and should win an honorable 
name on every continent of the globe. Yet this 
possibility, now become fact, lay coiled as a germ in 
the Ordinance of 1787, that gentis cunahula nostrae. 
The wise men who shaped the organization of this 
State steadily cherished the idea which was inherited 
from the fathers, of building a university in which 
their children, whether poor or rich, could obtain the 
higher culture of their minds. The plan of a univer- 
sity marked out by the territorial government in 1817 
was one which for breadth and completeness of con- 
ception we can even now only admire. The language 
of the Constitution of 1835 shows that its framers had 
the broadest and most generous views of public provi- 
sion for the support of libraries, education, including 
higher education, and especially of the University. 

[39] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



We may say, therefore, with strictest truth, that 
this idea of large and Hberal supply of facilities not 
only for common school training, but also for uni- 
versity education, was inwrought into the very 
conception of the State of Michigan. It has from 
the beginning formed a part of the life of the State. 
It has never been lost, but has grown with the growth 
of the State, and strengthened with its strength. 
And it has, I believe, never had so firm a hold upon 
the State as it has to-day. 

In the light of accomplished results, when we 
consider how little the total cost of the University 
has been to the State, less than half a million of 
dollars, not more in fact than these buildings and 
grounds and museums and libraries are worth; when 
we remember that it has sent forth fifty -seven hun- 
dred graduates, most of them persons of humble 
means, equipped for duty in all worthy callings of 
life; that the names and the works of its Professors 
are known and respected on both sides of the Atlan- 
tic; that it is recognized, we may modestly say, as 
taking rank with the best universities in the land, 
and that it has helped in no small degree to make 
the name of Michigan known wherever the cultiva- 
tion of science and letters is respected, may we 
not gratefully and truly declare that the fathers, 
whose legislation made this career of the Univer- 
sity possible, had an exalted and statesmanlike 
conception of the duty of the State to the higher 
education ? 

[401 



THE HIGHER EDUCATION 



I think, therefore, I shall be acting in completest 
harmony with the true spirit of Michigan if I employ 
the hour assigned me this morning in enforcing and 
illustrating this truth: 

That it is of vital importance, especially in a republic, 
that the higher education, as well as common school 
education, be accessible to the poor as well as to the rich. 

Notice that this implies that either through 
public or private endowment the higher education 
shall be furnished at less than its cost. From time 
to time there appear some impracticable theorizers 
— and they are too numerous just now — who lift 
up their voices and invoke the economic laws of 
supply and demand and the laissez alter doctrine in 
condemnation of endowments of schools of learning. 
But if colleges and universities were required to 
exact of students fees which should fully repay the 
cost of instruction, the poor must, with few excep- 
tions, be shut out from them. Should we say nothing 
of the interest on the capital represented in the real 
property of the average American college, it would 
cost each student from one hundred to two hundred 
dollars a year more than is now paid if the actual 
cost of the instruction were returned to the treasury 
of the institution. If the interest on the amount 
invested in the buildings, grounds, libraries, and 
collections were to be made good by the fees for 
tuition, the annual cost to each student would 
probably be increased by from four hundred to six 
hundred dollars. 

[41] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



Obviously the great mass of the men now in the 
colleges would be excluded. The higher education 
would be, as a rule, within reach of the rich alone. 
As it is, even now many are able to complete their 
course only by self-denial and by labors which are 
really heroic. Now, what I affirm is that any 
arrangement that should leave the higher education 
accessible to the rich alone would be in the highest 
degree unwise. In support of this statement I have 
to say: 

1. It is in itself fitting, and, in a certain sense, it 
is due to children as human beings, that the poorest 
child should have proper facilities for obtaining by 
reasonable effort the best development of his talent 
and character. I think I may appeal to the common 
sense and the general feeling of civilized men in 
recognition of this truth. One of the highest ends 
of society is to help men make the most of them- 
selves. True, as I shall soon show, this is partly 
because it is for the interest of all, of society at large. 
But beyond that we instinctively recognize it as a 
duty to do what we can, both individually and 
through the organized action of society, to open to 
every child — and for the child's own sake — a 
fair chance for the best start in life for which his 
talent fits him. I know that we often justify our 
providing a free common school education simply 
by showing the necessity of such an education as a 
preparation for citizenship. But I believe that down 
in our hearts there is a profound satisfaction, and 

[42] 



THE HIGHER EDUCATION 



often an impelling motive to our action, in the con- 
viction that we are doing simply what is just, what is 
due to every child as a human being, in giving him 
an opportunity to kindle into a flame any divine 
spark of intelligence within him. Is it too much 
to say that the infant born into a civilized and 
Christian society has a right to claim something more 
than a bare possibility — has a right to claim a 
tolerable probability of such moral and intellectual 
surroundings as shall make education and character 
accessible to him, if he has a fair amount of talent, 
self-denial, and energy? For the moment I am not 
considering whether his claim should be met by 
legislation or by voluntary action. But that it 
should be met by society in some way, I think, will 
be generally conceded. 

What more touching spectacle is there than that 
of an ingenuous and high-spirited youth, consumed 
with an insatiable thirst for knowledge, endowed 
with faculties that might make him the peer of the 
greatest, yet chained by the heavy hand of poverty 
through all his best years to the foot of the ladder, 
on which his aspiring soul would, if unfettered, so 
easily and so joyously have mounted to the stars. 
His indomitable energy may enable him at last, 
after years of heavy struggle, to attain a lofty height. 
But would it not be a blessed act, would it not be a 
just and wise and righteous act, to relieve him of 
so much of the struggle as is not needful for the 
discipline of his soul, and to secure to him as well as 

[43] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



to society years of his most fruitful work? As the 
magnet draws the particles of steel from the dust 
and lifts them into view, so the common school 
system, stretching out its sensitive and generous 
hands to every child in this commonwealth, lifts 
the exceptionally gifted into notice, makes him and 
his friends cognizant of his power and his promise, 
kindles in him the flame of a noble ambition for learn- 
ing, and compels us to recognize the duty of society 
to smooth the way from the cradle of talent in the 
humblest log hut to the halls of the highest learning. 
To stimulate to the utmost the ambition of these 
pupils by your schools, to set their minds on fire with 
this unquenchable desire for ampler culture, and 
yet to make that culture practically inaccessible, 
to slam the door of the college in the face of every 
one who is poor, were illogical and cruel and unworthy 
your boasted civilization. 

2. But we need to make the higher education 
accessible to the poor, not merely on account of the 
poor and gifted scholars themselves, but also because 
this is best for society. We need all the intelligence, 
all the trained minds we can have. There is never 
a surplus of wisdom and true learning. There is 
often a surplus of pedantry. There is often an excess 
of false pride on the part of those who have not 
talent enough to shine in purely intellectual pur- 
suits, and who foolishly hold themselves above the 
only pursuits for which, with all their advantages 
of education, their moderate mental endowments 

[44] 



THE HIGHER EDUCATION 



fit them. But these are merely incidental evils 
belonging to any system of higher education. Of 
strong, well-balanced, well-furnished minds we can- 
not have too many. They are the true riches of 
a nation. Without them the mines of El Dorado 
cannot make a people rich or strong. With them 
the dwellers on a desert may become prosperous 
and invincible. 

Now, God bestows talent with impartial hand 
equally on the rich and the poor. He sows the seeds 
of genius in what might seem the unlikeliest spots. 
He often places the choicest jewels in the humblest 
settings. His rarest gifts of mind are dropped in 
the obscurest homes. As the son of Sirach has told 
us, "Wisdom lifteth up the head of him that is of 
low degree, and maketh him to sit among great 
men." It was on an Ayrshire peasant that Heaven 
bestowed the power of the sweetest song that ever 
rose on the Scottish hills. It was to the blacksmith's 
son, the bookbinder's apprentice, Faraday, that the 
electric currents, in their rapid and unseen flight, 
paused to reveal their secrets. It was given to a 
colliery fireman to harness steam to our chariots 
and bear us as on the wings of the wind across the 
continent, and so to revolutionize the commercial 
methods of the world. It was on a man whose 
origin is so obscure that his parentage can scarcely 
be traced that God laid the responsibility and con- 
ferred the power of leading us out of the disgrace 
of slavery and the blackness of darkness of civil war 

[451 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



into the sweet light of true freedom and welcome 
peace. It is to a Michigan telegraph boy that God 
lends so divine a vision that he sees and measures 
and harnesses to his service the subtlest forces of 
nature. The scientific savans of the world look on 
in wonder as at the command of Edison dumb 
matter speaks, the word which died away upon the 
empty air weeks ago gains a resurrection and falls 
again upon our ear with a living voice. As distant 
Arcturus, more than one million and six hundred 
thousand times as far away from us as our sun, 
reports visibly to him the almost infinitesimal quan- 
tity of heat which its pencil of light, after travelling 
its weary journey of more than five and twenty 
years, has brought with it to earth, we ask in amaze- 
ment what revelation is next to be made through 
this interpreter, for whom nature seems to have 
lost her wonted coyness and secrecy. 

No nation is rich enough to spurn the help which 
God gives in such rare minds as these, though their 
childhood is housed in hovels. No nation should 
be so short-sighted as to pile up obstacles in their 
path, or even to leave any which can be removed. 
As the husbandman at the foot of the western Sierras, 
at great cost and with infinite pains, makes a secure 
channel to bring the fertilizing mountain stream to 
his fields, guiding to it every rivulet which can 
swell its volume, and thus makes the parched desert 
blossom like the rose and wave with golden harvests, 
so may a nation well do much to smooth the way for 

[46] 



THE HIGHER EDUCATION 

its gifted children to enlarge their faculties, to enrich 
their minds, and thus pour far and wide the benefi- 
cent streams of their influence, and give us richer 
harvests than those of corn and wine and oil. 

3. Again, we need to put the higher education 
within the reach of the poor, because we cannot 
afford to endow the rich alone with the tremendous 
power of trained and cultivated minds. To do this 
might form an aristocracy of formidable strength. 
So long as the poor have anything like an equal 
chance with the rich of developing their intellectual 
power, we have little to fear from an aristocracy of 
wealth; but let wealth alone have the highest in- 
tellectual training, let the poor as a class be shut 
out from the schools of generous culture, and we 
must either consign the control of all intellectual and 
political life to the hands of the rich, or else have a 
constant scene of turbulence between the ignorant 
many and the enlightened few. Bitter class hatred 
would be inevitable. There can be no stable equili- 
brium, no permanent prosperity for such a society. 

Learning, too, would probably soon give place 
to pedantry, displayed like the ribbons and orders 
of a petty German court. The scholarship which 
is a mere concomitant and badge of wealth would 
become vain and meretricious and shallow. 

Yet there are men who, professing to speak in the 
interests of the poor, of true learning, and of sound 
philosophy, inveigh against a system like that which 
in Michigan opens the doors of all learning to the 

[47] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



humblest as well as to the richest child, and insist 
that we shall make every one pay to the full the cost 
of his high school and university education. Do 
they not see that this would be a matter of little 
consequence to the rich, who could easily secure their 
training at any expense, but that it would consign 
the poor children, however endowed with talent, 
to the humblest acquisitions of learning or to the 
most trying struggle to attain to true culture? 
It is in the interest of the poor, it is in the interest 
of true and enlightened democracy, that we insist 
that the highest education shall be accessible to all 
classes. 

The most democratic atmosphere in the world is 
that of the college. There all meet on absolutely 
equal terms. Nowhere else do the accidents of birth 
or condition count for so little. The son of the 
millionnaire has no advantage over the son of the 
washerwoman or over the liberated slave, who has 
hardly clothes enough to cover his nakedness. 
Nowhere in the world is a man so truly weighed and 
estimated by his brains and his character. God 
forbid that the day should ever come when the spirit 
of snobbishness or aristocracy or pride of wealth 
should rule in our college halls. 

Talk about oppressing the poor by sustaining the 
University ! It is the sons and daughters of the men 
who are poor or of very moderate means who form 
the great majority of the students here and in almost 
every institution of higher learning. I could move 

[48] 



THE HIGHER EDUCATION 



your hearts to pity or to admiration if I could call one 
after another of many whom I see before me on this 
occasion to come up here and tell what toils they have 
performed for long and weary years, what hardships 
and privations they and their parents have endured 
to gather up the few hundreds of dollars needed to 
maintain them with the closest and most pinching 
economy during their few years of residence here. 
I hope that those who practise high thinking and 
plain living will always be in the majority on these 
grounds. Sad, indeed, will it be for the University 
and sad for the State when such as they cannot by 
manly effort secure to themselves the best help which 
the resources of this school can offer to them. 

Anything more hateful, more repugnant to our 
natural instincts, more calamitous at once to learn- 
ing and to the people, more unrepublican, more 
undemocratic, more unchristian than a system which 
should confine the priceless boon of higher education 
to the rich I cannot conceive. 

Have an aristocracy of birth if you will, or of riches 
if you wish, but give our plain boys from the log 
cabins a chance to develop their minds with the 
best learning, and we will fear nothing from your 
aristocracy. It will speedily become either ridiculous 
or harmless, or, better still, will be stimulated to 
intellectual activity by learning that in the fierce 
competitions of life something besides blue blood 
or inherited wealth is needed to compete with the 
brains and character from the cabins. 

[49] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



4. Another cogent reason for opening the privileges 
of higher education to all classes in this country is 
found in our distribution of political power through- 
out the community. The largest part of the public 
action which most concerns us is taken or determined 
by local organizations. The successful working of 
our republican system depends upon the distribution 
through the smaller towns and villages and through 
the rural districts of men of intelligence. If all 
the cultivated minds were concentrated in one capital 
or in a few great cities, we could not perpetuate our 
form of government. Any strong tendency toward 
such a result must seriously interfere with the purity 
and eflBciency of our institutions. 

We need, therefore, to reach with our best training 
men drawn from all classes, from all pursuits in life, 
and men who are to return to all honorable and 
worthy vocations, not alone in the great cities, but 
in all parts of the land. It is by this diffusion of the 
educated men, and by the diffusion through them 
of the direct and indirect advantages of education 
among the inhabitants of every town and hamlet, 
that a great school of learning does its highest work 
and justifies its claim to support by the whole people. 
It disseminates over the whole State men who are 
trained to be intelligent leaders of thought, to 
enlighten their neighbors on important affairs, to 
expose the fallacies of charlatans in politics, science, 
and religion, to keep alive an interest in education, 
to discharge all the duties of citizenship, and, if 

[50] 



THE HIGHER EDUCATION 



need be, of public oflSce. It thus keeps the whole 
body politic vigorous and healthy with the life- 
giving currents which it sends to the extremities, 
as well as with the strength which it lends to the 
heart. It is not true that it blesses only the men 
who receive its degrees. Through them it blesses 
all around them. Its graduates are often the medium 
of greater blessings to others than to themselves. 
Mark the venerable physician, who, trained to the 
highest professional skill in its halls, has ministered 
with unselfish devotion for a generation to the sick 
and suffering. Has he or have they been most 
blessed by his education .^^ Take the lawyer, whose 
advice for years the widow, the orphan, the poor 
have instinctively sought, whose opposition the 
criminal has dreaded, whose counsel and guidance 
the town, the county, the public have always desired 
in every emergency; has his power been only or 
chiefly a good fortune to himself.^ In a large sense 
it is true that the advantages of the higher education 
cannot be selfishly monopolized by the recipient of it. 
It is not truly enjoyed, it can hardly be used in any 
honorable way without conferring benefits on others. 
You might as well talk of the sun monopolizing 
and enjoying alone the light which is generated in 
it as talk of a scholar monopolizing the advantages 
of his education. The moment the sun shines, 
the wide universe around is bathed in its life-giving 
beams. Intellectual activity is necessarily luminous, 
outgoing, diffusive, reproductive. The graduates 

[51] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



who are going out from this University are not taking 
with them hidden treasures to enjoy in secret as the 
miser gloats in the soHtude of his garret over his 
gold, but rather precious seed which they will sow 
in every town and hamlet of this broad State, while 
the thousands about them will share with them the 
harvest of their sowing. 

I need hardly say that any system which should 
confine the best education to the rich would greatly 
curtail this diffusion of the blessings of education 
and would, doubtless, tend to concentrate the 
educated men almost entirely in the great cities. 
Is it too much to say that it would tend to politi- 
cal centralization and to a loss of the inestimable 
advantages which flow from the wise and vigorous 
local administration of public affairs, and from the 
comparative homogeneousness in our society caused 
by the distribution of educated men throughout our 
communities? 

5. The general opinion of mankind in all Christian 
lands has favored some plan of bringing liberal 
education within the reach of the men of humble 
means. It has been reserved for these latter days 
to make the discovery that there is danger in thus 
opening the fountains of learning to the poor as 
well as rich. For the most part the direction of 
education has been in the hands of the church. 
Now whatever criticism may be made upon the 
church through these eighteen centuries, she has 
with impartial hand held wide open to men of high 

[521 



THE HIGHER EDUCATION 



and of low degree alike the gates to generous learning. 
She has encouraged and persuaded the rich to endow 
her schools and colleges and universities, so that 
the instruction might be almost, if not entirely, free. 
She has taught them to found scholarships and 
fellowships, which would enable the poorest boy to 
spend the best years of his youth and manhood in 
the still air of delightful study. 

The rulers of every nation of Europe have cherished 
their great schools of learning as the choicest jewels 
in their crowns. They have lavished wealth on them 
and endowed them so richly that at most of them the 
cost of instruction is little more than nominal, and 
peasants and princes are found on the same bench 
listening to the lectures of the great scholars in every 
science. What glorious monuments of wise generos- 
ity these universities have been ! Royal houses have 
risen and disappeared, kingdoms have come and gone, 
the map of Europe has been made and remade again 
and again, but the great mediaeval schools, to whose 
halls centuries ago thousands of eager scholars 
trooped from all parts of Europe, still stand fresh 
in eternal youth, welcoming with princely hospital- 
ity poor and rich to their halls, pouring out their 
streams of blessing from generation to generation 
and from age to age, with a flow as copious and 
as unceasing as the Danube or the Rhine. If we 
may judge by the past, what work of man is 
more enduring or more beneficent than a strong 
university .f^ 

[53] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



In this country, too, where the early settlers began 
to lay the foundation of our most venerable university 
before they had made comfortable homes for them- 
selves, we find public and private generosity vieing 
in supplying the wants of the infant college. While 
the colonial authorities voted appropriations, we 
see the self-denying men and women stripping their 
scanty libraries of books and their ill-supplied tables 
of crockery to equip the struggling institution, 
whither the sons of all might repair to be trained 
for every worthy work in State and church. Con- 
tributions were solicited for the maintenance of 
poor students, so that, to borrow the language of an 
early president to the United Commissioners of the 
Colonies, "the commonwealth may be furnished 
with knowing and understanding men and the church 
with an able ministry." 

From that time to this it has been the aim of the 
guardians of that ancient university, and of every 
college which has been established in the land, to 
furnish education at such a rate that boys of modest 
means could procure it. Not one such institution 
has been administered on the theory that the students 
should pay the full cost of the education furnished. 
Endowments and scholarships have been sought 
and secured. In some cases so liberal provision 
has been made that prudent students, it is reported, 
have actually been able to meet their expenses and 
lay aside a balance. In some parts of the country, 
it is said, there has sprung up between colleges 

[54] 



THE HIGHER EDUCATION 

an unseemly competition in securing students by 
bidding for them with pecuniary temptations. But 
these abuses and indiscretions at least show how 
deep-seated is the conviction in the American mind 
that poverty shall not keep a gifted youth from the 
opportunity for a liberal education. This conviction 
is happily so firmly rooted there need be no fear 
that it will be conquered by the laissez oiler theory, 
which would make no special provision for placing 
the higher education within the reach of those who 
cannot defray the full expenses of it. 

But from that section of the country which is 
most amply provided with privately endowed colleges, 
even from those States whose oldest colleges were 
established, or in their early days assisted, by legis- 
lative appropriations, we sometimes hear exception 
taken to the method by which this and other West- 
ern universities have been endowed and sustained; 
namely, by grants of land and by taxation. The 
educational problem before the early settlers of 
Michigan and other Western States was peculiar. 
These States were occupied rapidly and for the 
most part by men and women who had been well 
trained in schools and colleges. They were extremely 
desirous that their children should be thoroughly 
educated. The National Government had given 
them an endowment with which to begin a university. 
They had energy, ambition, a love of intelligence, 
but they had little ready means for the planting of 
colleges. They saw plainly that to build up. by pri- 

[55] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



vate benefactions a first-rate school of higher learn- 
ing, like the best in the East, would require here, 
as it had required there, a hundred years of toil. 
Meanwhile, their children and their children's 
children would have passed away. Two or three 
generations must live and die without the facilities 
for training which a strong and thoroughly equipped 
school could furnish. Was there any question what 
they ought to do.f^ Plainly, the wise policy for them 
was to avail themselves of the national endowment, 
and then, if need be, to supplement it as prosperity 
should bring the State ampler means. 

It was not until 1867, when the University had 
already become strong and renowned, when the 
pupils were more numerous than those of any other 
institution in the land, that the State was called 
to give the first penny to its support, and then 
the whole appropriation was fifteen thousand dollars 
a year, which was just one twentieth of a mill tax 
on the appraisal of the taxable property of this rich 
Commonwealth. The total sum received by tax for 
the University and drawn from the State treasury 
down to January, 1879, is in round numbers four 
hundred and sixty-nine thousand dollars. If we 
compute this as distributed over the entire time 
since the foundation of the University we shall find 
that it is an average of twelve thousand dollars a 
year, or one fifty-second of a mill on the present 
valuation. A man who is taxed on one thousand 
dollars would pay not quite two cents a year. This 

[56] 



THE HIGHER EDUCATION 



is the oppressive burden which the University has 
laid on the tax-payer for the support of an institution 
which brings the treasures of the best knowledge to 
his children and to yours. 

The grounds upon which taxation for the support 
of the higher education justly rests were so ably set 
forth by the distinguished orator^ of last year, whose 
eloquent words are still ringing in our ears, that it 
would be superfluous for me to dwell upon them at 
this time. I am now aiming merely to remind you 
that at an expenditure which it is simply ridiculous 
to call burdensome, this prosperous State of Michigan 
has, through the wisdom of her founders, succeeded 
in furnishing the higher education to all her sons 
and daughters, without distinction of birth, race, 
color, or wealth. The fathers acted with a wise 
and far-seeing statesmanship. They saved to the 
State three generations of educated men. Most 
of them lived to see such a supply of buildings, 
libraries, scientific collections, and other apparatus 
of a university here as could not by private endow- 
ments have been secured perhaps in a century. 
Indeed it is probable that private endowments 
would have been scattered among many small 
colleges, as they have been in other States, and that 
no institution at all comparable to this in strength 
would have grown up in Michigan. By planting 
the University so early, they have enriched every 
profession and nearly every vocation in Michigan 

^ Hon. George V. N. Lothrop. 

[57] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



with intelligent and well-equipped men. Through 
this school of learning they have attracted to the 
State a large number of brilliant and scholarly youth, 
who after the completion of their studies have chosen 
this Commonwealth as their home, and are adorning 
every calling in life. Is there any one act of our 
fathers by which they have done more to promote 
the prosperity of the State, to make its name known 
and honored throughout this land and beyond the sea, 
than by the establishment of a university in which 
the best learning of the times should be practically 
open to all, so that whoever would might come and 
take freely, almost without money and without price .^^ 
Regal indeed are the gifts of nature to Michigan. 
A soil which bountifully rewards the toil of the hus- 
bandman and yearly fills to overflowing his granaries 
and barns ; a climate so propitious that a large part 
of the State is a veritable paradise of fruits, where 
Heaven kindly draws the sting of frost from the west 
wind so that the breezes fall soft as the gales of Eden 
on the peach and the pear and the grape; mines richer 
in enduring wealth than those of Golconda; forests 
still magnificent in primeval grandeur, and rivalling 
the mines in value; salt wells which yield the wealth 
of subterranean seas in inexhaustible and unceasing 
stream; the broad lakes bound by the hand of God 
around the State like a zone of beauty; the sky, the 
inland seas, the earth, nay, the waters under the 
earth, all combine to pour their richest contributions 
into the lap of this favored Commonwealth. 

[58] 



THE HIGHER EDUCATION 



Yet, with all these riches, poor indeed had been 
the State had not a brave and manly and intelligent 
people chosen it as their home. For earth and sky 
and water and mine had all been here for ages. 
But savages could not of these make a prosperous 
commonwealth. It is intelligence and character 
alone which can make a great and thriving State. 
And so the grave question which pressed itself on the 
fathers still forces itself on us. How shall we train 
our children to make the most of these conspicuous 
advantages, to build a State which shall be truly 
great, to contribute their full part to the honor and 
glory of the nation, to lead happy and useful lives, 
to be a blessing to mankind .f^ Can we do better 
than to answer this question in the spirit in which 
they answered it when, in accordance with the 
direction of the Ordinance of 1787, they took care 
that schools and the means of education should be 
forever encouraged, and laid deep and strong the 
foundations of school and university? 

We may be pardoned for believing that the result 
in our own State has justified what we may call the 
Michigan policy. We cling to it still. But whatever 
be the method of endowment of our great schools, 
may the day never come when they shall be inac- 
cessible to the humblest youth in whom God has 
lodged the divine spark of genius, or that more com- 
mon but sometimes not less serviceable gift of useful 
talent. Let not a misapplication of the laissez faire 
doctrine in political economy, which has its proper 

[59] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



place, lead us to the fatal mistake of building up 
a pedantic aristocracy. Good learning is always 
catholic and generous. It welcomes the humblest 
votary of science and bids him kindle his lamp freely 
at the common shrine. It frowns on caste and 
bigotry. It spurns the artificial distinctions of 
conventional society. It greets all comers whose 
intellectual gifts entitle them to admission to the 
goodly fellowship of cultivated minds. It is essen- 
tially democratic in the best sense of that term. 
In justice, then, to the true spirit of learning, to 
the best interests of society, to the historic life of 
this State, let us now hold wide open the gates of 
this University to all our sons and daughters, rich 
or poor, whom God by gifts of intellect and by 
kindly providences has called to seek for a liberal 
education. 



[60] 



in 

COMMEMORATIVE ORATION 



JUNE 30, 1887 

DELIVERED AT THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 

OF THE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNIVERSITY 

OF MICHIGAN 



Ill 

COMMEMORATI\^ ORATION 

W E celebrate to-day the jubilee of this University. 
Her years are indeed few when compared with those 
of Heidelberg University, which last year kept her 
five hundredth anniversary, or with those of the Uni- 
versity of Edinburgh, which recently observed her 
tercentenary, or even with those of Harvard Univer- 
sity, which last autumn gathered an illustrious assem- 
bly to celebrate the two hundred and fiftieth year 
of her prosperous life. But in this country, where 
we judge men by their achievements rather than by 
their lineage, we properly judge of institutions by 
their deeds rather than by their age. When we con- 
sider what we must, in all soberness of language, call 
the extraordinary development of this University, 
especially during the last thirty -five years; when we 
remember that men are living who have shot wild 
deer upon the grounds which now form our Campus ; 
when we see that from the number of her students and 
from the extent, variety, and excellence of her work, she 
is deemed by the public not unworthy a place by the 
side of the oldest and best endowed universities of our 
country, and that she has sent out more than eight 
thousand graduates who are adorning all honorable 
vocations in all parts of the world, — we may well 

[631 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



pause for a day even at this early stage in her history 
to rejoice at the unparalleled rapidity of her growth, 
to acknowledge our grateful appreciation of the men 
who laid her foundations with prescient wisdom, and 
of the equally wise men who builded thereon in the 
broad spirit of the founders, and to stimulate our 
hearts with fresh hope and courage for the future. 
The vigorous and virile life of the West, which within 
the memory of many now before me has reared im- 
mense cities on the prairies and has builded States 
that are empires all the way from the Great Lakes to 
the Pacific, has also poured its currents through the 
veins of this school of learning and has hurried it 
in a few brief years to the development which the 
strongest of the New England universities took two 
centuries and more to reach. 

We might in a very just sense celebrate this year 
the centennial of the life of the University. For the 
germ of that life and of the life of all the State univer- 
sities in the West is found in that great instrument, 
the Ordinance of 1787, which was adopted just a hun- 
dred years ago the thirteenth of next month. You 
remember that memorable article, whose first sen- 
tence we have placed here upon our walls, a sentence 
which should be engraved in letters of gold on fitting 
monuments in every State that was carved out of 
the Northwest Territory: "Religion, morality, and 
knowledge being necessary to good government and 
the happiness of mankind, schools and the means 
of education shall forever be encouraged." 

[641 



COMMEMORATIVE ORATION, 1887 

Within a fortnight after the adoption of the Ordi- 
nance, Congress acted up to the spirit of the impera- 
tive ^AaZZ in that instrument by making appropriations 
of lands for a university and schools in Ohio, the 
first of the long series of appropriations of lands by 
the General Government for educational purposes. 
The precedent then established has been uniformly 
followed in the admission of new States. Well, 
therefore, might not only this University, but all 
the public schools and the State universities in the 
Northwest, join in grateful observance of the hun- 
dredth anniversary of the Great Charter of freedom 
and intelligence for this region. Well might they 
together commemorate the centennial of the inau- 
guration of that fruitful policy which has endowed 
institutions of learning, from the lowest to the 
highest, by the gift of public lands. 

It was in strict accordance with the spirit of the 
great Ordinance that Congress took action, March 
26, 1804, reserving for a seminary of learning a 
township in each of the three divisions of the Terri- 
tory of Indiana, one of which became in 1805 the 
Territory of Michigan and so received the grant. 
And on this day when we gladly recall the names of 
our benefactors, let us not forget to acknowledge 
that our endowments were materially enlarged by 
the generosity of the aboriginal inhabitants of this 
region. By the Treaty of Fort Meigs, negotiated 
in 1817, the Ottawas, Chippewas, and Pottawatomies 
granted six sections of land to be divided between 

[65] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



the Church of St. Anne, in Detroit, and the College 
of Detroit. This College of Detroit, which was the 
lineal ancestor of the University, was not established 
until a month after the treaty. When steps were 
taken in 1824 to select the lands ceded by the Indians, 
such difficulties were encountered in complying with 
the conditions of the act of 1804 that Congress in 
1826 made the location of lands practicable and 
authorized the selection of a quantity equal in amount 
to twice the original grant. The entire endowment 
of lands thus became equal to two townships and 
three sections. There is something pathetic in this 
gift of the Indians, who were even then so rapidly 
fading away. They doubtless hoped that some of 
their descendants might attain to the knowledge 
which the white man learned in his schools and which 
gave him such wonderful power and skill. Their 
hope has never been realized, so far as I know, by 
the education of any full-blooded Indian at the 
University. We cannot rival Harvard, which has on 
her roll of graduates the unpronounceable name of 
one of the aborigines. But we should never forget 
the generous impulses of the men of the forest who 
gave of what was dearest to them an amount sur- 
passing in ultimate value the gifts for which the 
names of Nicholas Brown and Elihu Yale and John 
Harvard were bestowed on colleges in New England.^ 

^ This comparison of the generosity of the Indians to that of the 
founders of Eastern colleges was first made by Judge Cooley, in his 
Michigan, p. 313. 

[66] 



COMMEMORATIVE ORATION, 1887 

We may perhaps be grateful also that in their 
modesty they did not ask that their names should 
be given to their beneficiary. 

It has been said, and doubtless with truth, that 
the Congresses which adopted the Ordinance and 
made the earlier gifts of lands for educational 
purposes did not at all appreciate how great were to 
be the beneficent results of their action. How was 
it possible that they should? For achievement 
has in this Western country outrun the prophecy 
of the most sanguine seer. The wildest dreams of 
the future development of this region which were 
cherished by the most enthusiastic settlers of Ohio 
a hundred years ago seem tame and prosaic by the 
side of the romantic facts of the history itself as 
we read it to-day. How could they have imagined 
that by this time there should be in the Northwest 
Territory, a large part of which was then an un- 
trodden wilderness, a population four times as great 
as that of the whole United States in their day, and 
that over the whole of it schools, academies, and 
colleges should be sown multitudinous as the stars 
of heaven. If they builded better than they knew, 
there was in the scope of their far-reaching work a 
happy augury of the broad and generous wisdom 
which by some good fortune has presided over the 
various and successive plans for the organization 
and development of a university in this State. 

The original plan which was drawn by Judge 
Woodward in 1817 was characterized by remarkable 

[67] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



breadth, though sketched in language ridiculously 
pedantic. In the development of our strictly uni- 
versity work we have yet hardly been able to realize 
the ideal of the eccentric but gifted man who framed 
the project of the " Catholepistemiad, or University 
of Michigania," with its "thirteen didaxiim, or 
professorships." ^ Even while amusing ourselves at 
his polyglot vocabulary, we may remember that our 
statesmen of early days carried on their discussions 
under classical pseudonyms; that Mr. Jefferson 
suggested names for the Western States hardly less 
remarkable than the formidable title with which the 
University was burdened at its christening, and that 
the classical dictionary w^as fairly emptied on the 
towns of central New York. Judge Woodward, 
apparently mindful of the fact that universities had 
in every land grown up before the lower schools 
and had been the chief instrumentality in nourishing 
them, provided in his scheme that the President 
and the Professors of the University should have 
the entire direction of collegiate, secondary, and 
lower education. 

They were to have the power — I quote his compre- 
hensive language — "to establish colleges, academies, 
schools, libraries, museums, athenaeums, botanic gar- 
dens, laboratories, and other useful literary and sci- 
entific institutions consonant to the laws of the 
United States of America and of Michigan, and to 

^ The original draft in the handwriting of Judge Woodward is in the 
University Library. 

[68] 



COMMEMORATIVE ORATION, 1887 

provide for and appoint directors, visitors, curators, 
librarians, instructors and instructrixes, in, among, 
and throughout the various counties, cities, towns, 
townships, or other geographical divisions of Michi- 
gan." The instruction in every grade was to be gra- 
tuitous to those who were unable to pay the modest 
fees fixed. Fifteen per cent, of the taxes imposed 
and fifteen per cent, of the proceeds of four lotteries 
were to be devoted to the support of this institution 
thus charged with the conduct of all public educa- 
tion in Michigan. Whatever criticisms may be made 
upon this scheme it certainly showed in its author 
a remarkably broad conception of the range which 
should be given to education here, a conception, it 
may be believed, which was never lost from sight, 
and which doubtless made easy the acceptance 
twenty years later of the large plans of educational 
organization that were then readily adopted. It was 
a happy prophecy of the truly liberal spirit which 
was subsequently to guide in the conduct of the Uni- 
versity, that the first Professors appointed for the 
" Catholepistemiad " were the Rev. John Monteith, 
the Presbyterian minister in Detroit, and Gabriel 
Richard, the Roman Catholic Apostolical Vicar of 
Michigan. They established primary schools, and 
also the college in Detroit under the name of The 
First College of Michigania. For the aid of the 
Institution some few thousands of dollars were raised 
by subscription, and the unused balance of a fund, 
given by citizens of Montreal and Mackinaw to help 

[69] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



the sufferers from the fire which destroyed a large 
part of Detroit in 1805, was, at the request of its 
donors, turned into its treasury. 

In 1821 the governor and judges translated Judge 
Woodward's charter into modern forms of speech 
and modified it in some particulars. They gave to 
the institution the simple name of The University 
of Michigan. Repealing the act of 1817, they yet 
retained in the act or charter of 1821 the grant to the 
University of the power to establish colleges and 
schools so far as the funds, which were no longer 
to be furnished by taxation, would permit. The 
catholicity of this charter of 1821 is shown in this 
memorable article: 

"Be it enacted, that persons of every religious 
denomination shall be capable of being elected trus- 
tees; nor shall any person, as president, professor, 
instructor, or pupil, be refused admittance for his 
conscientious persuasion in matters of religion, pro- 
vided he demean himself in a proper manner and 
conform to such rules as may be established." 

The Trustees maintained in Detroit for some time 
what was known as a Lancasterian School, and until 
1837 a classical school, but their chief business con- 
sisted in caring for the lands. In those early years, 
when the population of the Territory was small, the 
college was not yet needed. But what we want to 
keep distinctly in mind to-day and to state with 
clearness and emphasis is that in both the act of 1817 
and in that of 1821, those two early charters of the 

[701 



COMMEMORATIVE ORATION, 1887 

University, what we may call the Michigan idea of a 
system of education, beginning with the University 
and stretching down through all the lower grades to 
the primary school, was distinctly set forth. While 
we are celebrating to-day the semi-centennial of the 
present form of the organization of the University, 
let us not forget that without impropriety a semi- 
centennial celebration might have been held twenty 
years ago; that there is, as the Supreme Court of 
the State has declared, a legal and corporate con- 
tinuity from the University of 1817 to that of 1821, 
and again to that of 1837; that a just conception of 
the functions of a university was at least seventy 
years ago made familiar to the citizens of Michigan; 
that what may be termed the Michigan idea of a 
imiversity was never entirely forgotten from that 
day until now, and, therefore, that the memory of 
the fathers who framed the charter and nourished 
the feeble life of those earlier universities should be 
cherished by us to-day and by our descendants 
forever. 

On the admission of Michigan to the Union as a 
State, broad plans for public education were taken up 
with a more vigorous spirit than ever before. The 
men who framed the first constitution and shaped the 
early legislation of the State were men of large views, 
great enterprise, and marked force. They had come 
mainly from Ohio, New York, and New England, 
though a few conspicuous leaders were from Virginia. 
A considerable proportion of them were college bred, 

[71] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



and all appreciated the importance of a well-organized 
system of public education. Isaac E. Crary, a 
graduate of Trinity (then called Washington) College, 
in Connecticut, was chairman of the Committee 
on Education in the Constitutional Convention and 
drafted the article on that subject which was incor- 
porated into our first constitution.^ Fortunately 
he had made a study of Cousin's famous Report 
on the Prussian System of Education, and under 
the inspiration of that study sketched in the article 
a most comprehensive plan. It provided for the 
appointment of a Superintendent of Public Instruc- 
tion, an oflficer then unknown to any one of our 
States; for the establishment of common schools, of 
a library for each township, and of a university; and 
in general for the promotion by the Legislature of 
intellectual, scientific, and agricultural improvement. 

^ The following facts concerning Mr. Crary, who exerted so large an 
influence in establishing the educational system of Michigan, have been 
obtained from his widow, residing at Marshall, Michigan: — 

Isaac Edwin Crary was born in Preston, Connecticut, October 2, 1804. 
He was educated at Bacon Academy, Colchester, Connecticut, and at 
Washington (now Trinity) College, Hartford. He graduated from the 
college in its first class, 1829, with the highest honors of the class. For 
two years he was associated in the editorial work of The New England 
Review, published at Hartford, with George D. Prentice, subsequently 
the well-known editor of The Louisville Journal. He came to Michigan 
in 1832. He was delegate to Congress from the Territory of Michigan 
and was the first representative of the State in Congress. He was once 
Speaker of the Michigan House of Representatives, and was a member of 
the convention which drafted the first constitution of the State. He was 
the author of the enacting clause of Michigan laws, "The People of the 
State of Michigan enact." He died May 8, 1854. 

172 1 



COMMEMORATIVE ORATION, 1887 

What a noble and statesmanlike conception those 
founders of Michigan had of the educational outfit 
needed by the young State, which they foresaw was 
destined to be a great and powerful State! What 
a rebuke is their action to some of the theorists of 
our day who would confine the action of the State 
in providing for education to elementary instruction ! 
Would that these men of narrow vision would study 
the words and the acts of the men who framed our 
first constitution and shaped our early legislation on 
education, and would thus learn what was the original 
and genuine Michigan spirit and temper concerning 
the support of all our educational institutions. 

Through Mr. Crary's influence, his friend, the 
Rev. John D. Pierce,^ a graduate of Brown Univer- 
sity, who had placed Cousin's Report in his hands 
and had discussed with him at length the plans of 
education needed in Michigan, was appointed the 
first Superintendent of Public Instruction. It was 
a singular good fortune that befell the State when 
Mr. Pierce was selected in that formative period 
for that important office. I cannot here pause to 
recognize what he did for the common schools. 
But I will say that Henry Barnard did not do more 
for the common schools of Rhode Island, nor Horace 
Mann for those of Massachusetts, than John D. 

* Mr. Pierce graduated at Brown University in 1822, and came to 
Michigan as a preacher in the service of the Presbyterian Home Mission- 
ary Society. He was Superintendent of Public Instruction in Michigan 
from 1836 to 1841. He died April 5, 1882, aged eighty-five. 

[73] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



Pierce did for those of Michigan. But to-day we 
are primarily concerned with what he did for the 
University. Having after his appointment made a 
journey to the East for the purpose of conferring 
with Edward Everett, President Day, Governor 
Marcy, and other prominent men, upon educational 
topics, he sketched with a free, bold hand, in his 
first report, presented in January, 1837, a plan for 
the organization of the University. He provided 
for the government of the Institution by a Board of 
Regents, a part of whom were alw'ays to be certain 
State officers, and a part of whom were to be elected 
by the Legislature. There were to be three depart- 
ments: one of Literature, Science, and the Arts, one 
of Law, and one of Medicine. The scope of instruc- 
tion was to be as broad as it was under Judge Wood- 
ward's scheme. Our means have not as yet enabled 
us to execute in all particulars the comprehensive 
plan which was framed by Mr. Pierce. 

Anticipating the question which might be asked 
in this little State of two hundred thousand souls, 
"Can an institution on a scale thus magnificent be 
sustained.^" this man, full of faith in the future of 
Michigan and in the intelligence of the people, 
bravely replied: "To suppose that the wants of the 
State will not soon require a superstructure of fair 
proportions, on a foundation thus broad, would be 
a severe reflection on the foresight and patriotism of 
the age. . . . Let the State move forward as pros- 
perously for a few years to come as it has for a few 

[74] 



COMMEMORATIVE ORATION, 1887 

years past, and one half of the revenue arising from 
the University fund will sustain an institution on a 
scale more magnificent than the one proposed, and 
sustain it too with only a mere nominal admittance 
fee. . . . The institution then would present an 
anomaly in the history of learning, a university of 
the first order, open to all, tuition free." ^ 

Moreover, he foresaw plainly what would be the 
advantages both to collegiate and to professional 
education in having professional schools established 
as a part of the University. He paraphrased most 
aptly a striking passage from Lord Bacon as follows : 
"To disincorporate any particular science from 
general knowledge is one great impediment to its 
advancement. For there is a supply of light and 
information which the particulars and instances of 
one science do yield and present for the framing 
and correcting the axioms of another science in 
their very truth and notion. For each particular 
science has a dependence upon universal knowledge, 
to be augmented and rectified by the superior light 
thereof." 2 

The Superintendent's lucid and intelligent report 
made a deep impression upon the Legislature and 
was adopted with scarcely a dissenting voice. On 
March 18, 1837, the act establishing the University 

* Shearman's System of Public Instruction and Primary School Law of 
Michigan, pp. 23-33, gives a large part of Superintendent Pierce's first 
report. 

* The original may be found in Spedding and Heath's edition (Ameri- 
can reprint). Vol. VI, pp. 43, 44. 

[75] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



was approved. It followed in all important partic- 
ulars the suggestions of the Superintendent. On 
the twentieth of March the act was approved which 
located the University at Ann Arbor, where the 
forty acres of land now constituting our Campus 
had been gratuitously offered as a site by the Ann 
Arbor Land Company. Three of the members of 
that company are still living in this city, E. W. 
Morgan, Charles Thayer, and Daniel B. Brown, and 
have been invited to be present as our guests to-day. 
The company purchased this land with the intention 
of presenting a part of it to the State as a site for 
the State House, in case this place were chosen for the 
capital. On the fifth of June, fifty years ago this 
month, the Board of Regents held their first meeting 
in this town. That day may perhaps with as much 
propriety as any be considered the natal day of the 
present organization of the University. 

The infancy of the Institution was not unattended 
with perils and with some disasters. A bill once 
passed the Senate and was defeated in the House by 
only one vote to distribute the income of the fund 
among various colleges which were planned or which 
might soon be planned. Mr. Pierce tells us that by 
his personal effort he secured the defeat of that bill. 
He had obtained from leading administrators of 
colleges in various parts of the country, and had 
incorporated in his annual report, opinions strongly 
urging the concentration of strength in one vigorous 
institution. Yet so powerful were the private and 

[76] 



COMMEMORATIVE ORATION, 1887 

local interests appealed to by the bill that the 
frittering away of the endowment and the establish- 
ment of a brood of weak and impoverished colleges 
were barely prevented. 

Again, the first Board of Regents made the 
mistake of adopting so magnificent a plan for build- 
ings that the execution of it must have crippled the 
resources of the treasury for a long time. But here 
again the vigilant Superintendent, Mr. Pierce, came 
to the rescue. He exercised the power he then had 
of vetoing the measure. He justified his act, which 
temporarily excited a strong feeling against him, 
by pointing out the fact, so often overlooked even in 
these days, that not bricks and mortar, but able 
teachers, libraries, cabinets, and museums, make a 
real university.^ 

A third peril, which the University did not wholly 
escape, was the sacrifice of much of the value of the 
lands that constituted the endowment. The power 
to sell the University lands w^as originally vested in 
the Superintendent of Public Instruction, and the 
minimum price of them was fixed at twenty dollars 
an acre. In fact the average price secured by the 
State in 1837 was twenty-two dollars and eighty-five 
cents an acre. Could the lands have been sold at 
the prices originally fixed, the endowment from 
the land grant would have been nearly double 
what it is. 

* Mr. Pierce gave an interesting account of his early efforts in behalf 
of the University in a paper published in The Michigan Teacher, Vol. IV. 

[77 1 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



But in 1839 an act was passed authorizing the sale 
at one dollar and a quarter an acre of any lands 
located for University purposes, if it were proved that 
before their location by the State they were occupied 
and cultivated in accordance with the pre-emption 
law of Congress. The friends of the University were 
filled with alarm at this prospect of so great a reduc- 
tion of the expected income. The Regents suspended 
all operations for organizing the University and 
appealed to Governor Mason to protect its interests. 
He interposed his veto of the bill and justified his 
veto by a stirring message, and so saved the endow- 
ment. In grateful recognition of this act and of 
the warm interest he always manifested in the 
University, we gladly hang his portrait on our walls 
with those of our other benefactors and friends. 
Already in 1831, and again in 1834, the Trustees had 
made a grave mistake by disposing at a low price 
of lands which under the United States grant had 
been chosen in the territory now occupied by the 
city of Toledo, and which of themselves, if kept 
until now, would have formed a large endowment. 
From 1838 to 1842 there was much legislation, 
reducing the price of lands below the minimum of 
twenty dollars an acre originally established. One 
act authorized a reappraisal of lands already sold 
at stipulated prices, in order to scale the prices down 
for the benefit of the purchaser. It was pleaded, 
and doubtless with some truth, that the financial 
disasters of 1837 and the years immediately following 

[78] 



COMMEMORATIVE ORATION, 1887 

made it difficult, if not impossible, for most pur- 
chasers to fulfil their contracts at that time. None 
the less the calamity to the University treasury was 
most serious. We can see now that it would have 
been far better for the University and perfectly just 
to the purchasers to extend the time of payment, 
but not to reduce the price. The general result of 
the management of our lands has been that, instead 
of obtaining for them the sum of $921,000, which at 
twenty dollars an acre Mr. Pierce in his first report 
showed they would bring, they have yielded 
$547,897.51, and one hundred and twenty-five acres 
remain unsold. It is not easy to guess how much 
more the Toledo lands would have added to our 
fund, if they had been retained for some years, but 
certainly some hundreds of thousands of dollars. 
Still, we may at least temper our regret at the sac- 
rifice which was made by remembering that no other 
one of the five States formed out of the Northwest 
Territory made the land grant of the United States 
yield so much to its University as Michigan did. 

A step taken by the Regents at the very outset 
was not without its perils to the University, though it 
also brought some needed help to the institution and 
to the State. It was the establishment of branches 
in various towns. These branches served as prepara- 
tory schools for the University and as training schools 
for teachers of the primary or district schools. 
They also awakened a widespread interest in higher 
education, and led ultimately to the establishment 

[79] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



of the excellent high schools for which Michigan is 
so distinguished. But they made so heavy a drain 
on the treasury of the University that they seriously 
embarrassed it, and had they been multiplied, as was 
at first intended, they would have absorbed the 
entire income. They did so desirable a work in 
our principal towns that there grew up a sentiment 
in favor of making the support of them the main 
object in the use of the University funds. Governor 
Barry, in his message in 1842, affirmed that the 
branches were to be more useful than the Univer- 
sity, and that they ought to be multiplied, though 
he recommended less expenditure on each. It is 
amusing to notice that they were objected to by 
some as aristocratic institutions, since a small tuition 
fee was charged. It is now pretty generally agreed 
that the support of the branches was by an illegal 
use of the University funds. After a few years the 
Regents found themselves obliged to cut down the 
appropriations to the branches, and finally in 1849 
to refuse them altogether. So this peril of frittering 
away the funds on schools, like the earlier one of 
frittering them away on numerous colleges, was 
happily escaped. 

Meantime from the date of their accession to office 
the Regents had been busy in preparing to launch the 
University. Their difficulties were very great. The 
management of the lands was not in their hands. 
They could not know, even approximately, in any 
one year how much money they could rely on having 

[80] 



COMMEMORATIVE ORATION, 1887 

the next year. They had no power to appoint a 
President. They had many discouragements in 
unwise legislation. But we owe them a debt of 
gratitude for the courage with which they pushed on. 
Our scientific friends will observe with interest that 
among their very first acts was the purchase of the 
Baron Lederer collection of minerals and a copy 
of Audubon's Birds of America. The very first 
Professor they appointed was Dr. Asa Gray, the 
distinguished botanist, who, crowned with laurels 
from both hemispheres, is still laboring with untir- 
ing activity in the freshness of a vigorous old age.^ 
He was called to the chair of Zoology and Botany. 
The Regents received in March, 1838, a loan of one 
hundred thousand dollars from the State, and by 
September, 1841, had completed the erection of 
four dwelling houses, absurdly planned by a New 
York architect, and of the building which now forms 
the north wing of this edifice. They first called this 
north wing the "main building," and afterwards, in 
honor of Governor Mason, Mason Hall, a name which 
unfortunately did not remain in use. And so now, 
in September, 1841, four years after the Regents had 
begun their work, we find the doors of the University 
really open for the reception of students, and Pro- 
fessor Whiting and good Doctor Williams, as we 
learned to call him afterwards, welcoming to their 
class-rooms five Freshmen and one Sophomore. It 
is to be presumed that there was not much hazing of 

» Dr. Gray died January 30, 1888. 

[81] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



Freshmen by the Sophomore class. All but one of 
those six students are still living, to march at the 
head of the long procession of graduates who have 
since left these halls. In spite of financial distresses, 
which more than once threatened to suspend the 
life of the Institution in 1841 and 1842, the two 
zealous Professors bravely held on to their work. 
By 1844 the Faculty was enlarged in number, and 
in 1845 the first class of students, numbering eleven, 
was graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Arts. 
From this time until the accession of Dr. Tappan 
to the presidency, the work of the college classes 
was carried on after the methods and in the spirit of 
the typical New England colleges. All colleges of 
standing, except the University of Virginia, were so 
conducted. The Professors were men of creditable 
attainments and were faithful to their duties. The 
substantial success of the men whom they trained, 
a good proportion of whom have rendered eminent 
services in various professions, is the best testimony 
to the excellence of the instruction they gave. But 
the number of pupils was small. The maximum 
number during that period was eighty-nine, reached 
in 1847-8. From that time, owing no doubt to the 
suspension of the branches, the attendance declined. 
In 1850 the report of the Board of Visitors states 
that only fifty students were actually in attendance, 
and inquires with earnestness why, when the tuition 
is free, students are not attracted in larger numbers 
to the University. After discussing the facts, it 

[82] 



COMMEMORATIVE ORATION, 1887 

concludes that the reasons of the lack of prosperity 
are the lack of a President, a want of unity in the 
Faculty, and the presence of Professors chosen on 
other grounds than those of fitness. This last 
remark evidently refers to the policy which had 
been followed of endeavoring to distribute the 
professorships among the several religious denomi- 
nations. 

Meantime, though the work of the college was so 
limited, the Regents had not lost sight of the broad 
plan which was originally contemplated for the Uni- 
versity. In 1847 they gave careful consideration to 
the subject of establishing Medical and Law Depart- 
ments. The result was that in 1850 the Medical 
Department was opened in the building which, much 
enlarged, still accommodates it, and a class exceeding 
in number the students in the Literary Department 
was in attendance during the first year. The ser- 
vices of Dr. Zina Pitcher, who had been on the 
Board since the organization of the University, 
though valuable in every way, were of special value 
to the Medical Department at this time and until 
his death. That Department speedily took that 
rank which it has ever since maintained, among 
the leading medical colleges of the country. Like 
the Literary Department, it has been fortunate in 
retaining in its chairs for more than a generation 
at least two of its accomplished teachers. Palmer 
and Ford, whom hundreds of their grateful pupils 
delight to greet here to-day. The graduates of 

[83] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



the early classes have special cause for thanksgiving 
in the fact that three of the Professors who opened 
the school are still living to receive their gratulations. 
Dr. Gunn, Dr. Douglas, and Dr. Allen. 

The Constitution adopted by the State in 1851 
provided for the election in that year of Regents by 
popular vote. The new Board at once addressed 
itself to the task of finding a President. The choice 
fell upon Dr. Henry Philip Tappan. No better man 
could have been selected for the special exigencies of 
the University at that time. A man of commanding 
presence, of marked intellectual endowments already 
proved by the authorship of books which had won for 
him reputation on both sides of the Atlantic, of large 
familiarity with the history of education, of experi- 
ence as a college teacher, of broad and well-defined 
views on university policy, of the warmest sympathy 
with Crary and Pierce and the founders of this Insti- 
tution in their admiration of the Prussian system, 
of remarkable power of impressing others with his 
views whether by public speech or by private inter- 
course, he took up the work here with a vigor and 
earnestness that speedily kindled in all hearts the 
hope of that brilliant success which soon crowned his 
labors. He confessed that he was attracted to 
Michigan by the broad views embodied in the plan 
of the State system of education. In the spirit of 
that plan he brought to his work the most generous 
conception of the function of the University, and 
he soon awakened in the public an enthusiastic 

[84] 



COMMEMORATIVE ORATION, 1887 

sympathy with his own large ideas. He aroused 
people to an appreciation of the fact that our State 
system of education could not reach its proper 
development without a well-equipped university as 
its heart to send the energies of its life down through 
the schools. 

Not yet have we filled in the sketch which he 
drew of the ideal university for Michigan. He 
maintained that a real university ought to give 
instruction not only in the studies ordinarily pursued 
in colleges in that day, but also in the fine arts, in 
agriculture, in the industrial arts, in pedagogy, and 
in the preparation for the so-called learned profes- 
sions. He desired that students should have gradu- 
ated in the Literary Department before they were 
admitted to the professional schools. Abandoning 
the idea which had prevailed that professorships 
should be distributed among the various religious 
denominations, he maintained that no sectarian or 
political tests should be considered in making 
appointments, but only character and moral and 
intellectual fitness. By his counsel the dormitory 
system was abandoned, and the vast sum which 
would have been needed to provide lodging houses 
for students was saved, and the students to their 
advantage have for the most part enjoyed the whole- 
some influence of the home life of our citizens. He 
stoutly opposed the separation and dispersion of 
the various parts of the University, and maintained 
that the very idea of a university supposes the con- 

[85] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



centration of books, apparatus, and learned men in 
one place. He looked forward to a day when the 
merely gymnasial work should give place here to 
genuine university work. These and other kindred 
ideas, now familiar to us, but new to many in those 
early days. Dr. Tappan advanced and vindicated 
with a stirring eloquence before the Legislature, 
before the students and Faculties, and before the 
public, until they were understood and widely 
appreciated. 

With equal zeal he pushed the internal develop- 
ment of the University. He added to the Faculty 
a corps of brilliant scholars, two of whom. 
Dr. Winchell and Dr. Frieze, abide with us even 
now, and have builded their fruitful lives into the 
life of the University. He introduced the scientific 
and the partial course of instruction to afford facilities 
to those who did not wish to pursue the classical 
curriculum. He secured funds for the astronomical 
observatory, which, under Brunnow and later under 
Watson, was destined to win so much renown for 
the University. A new life, a new enthusiasm were 
awakened throughout the whole institution. Both 
teachers and students were full of zeal and of hope. 
They caught the spirit and re-echoed everywhere 
the stimulating words of the new leader, until every 
one not only saw that a real University was growing 
here with unprecedented vigor, but was full of faith 
that a much more brilliant development in the 
near future was secured. This ardent faith was 

[86] 



COMMEMORATIVE ORATION, 1887 

itself a guaranty of the success for which it looked. 
I doubt if in the sixth decade of this century any other 
university in the land was administered in so broad, 
free, and generous a spirit as this was under Dr. 
Tappan and his large-minded colleagues in the 
Faculties. Most of the colleges were in bondage to 
old traditions. Dr. Wayland, with his herculean 
strength, rose up in rebellion against exclusive devo- 
tion to the old ways under which the colleges were 
pining away, and made an effort for larger freedom 
of action even before Dr. Tappan came here. But 
his effort was only partially successful and for a 
limited time. But this University having once 
started upon the new path, blazed out by Dr. 
Tappan and his associates, never once faltered in 
its progress, but has gone bravely on to larger and 
larger successes. 

In 1859 occurred that important event in the his- 
tory of the University, the opening of the Law 
School. Perhaps never was an American law school 
so fortunate in its first Faculty, composed of those 
renowned teachers, Charles I. Walker, James V. 
Campbell, and Thomas M. Cooley, all living, thank 
God, to take part in this celebration, and to receive 
the loving salutations of the more than three thou- 
sand graduates who, as learners, have sat delighted 
at their feet. The fame which these men and those 
afterwards associated with them gave to the school 
was a source of great strength to the whole Univer- 
sity. It is a significant fact, deserving of special 

[87] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



recognition, that the estabhshment of the Medical 
and Law Schools contributed very much to the rapid 
increase in the number of students in the Literary 
Department. Every graduate of each of those 
schools became instrumental in turning hither the 
steps of students who desired collegiate learning. 

When Dr. Tappan closed his official career, after 
eleven years of service, the Literary Department 
had more than quadrupled the number of students 
it had on his accession to office, the Medical Depart- 
ment had two hundred and fifty students, the Law 
School one hundred and thirty -four, the total attend- 
ance was six hundred and fifty -two, and the Univer- 
sity was recognized on both sides of the Atlantic as 
a great and worthy school of liberal learning. 

While in a certain very just and emphatic sense 
the University rests on foundations laid seventy 
years ago, and, in the form in which we know it, has 
been builded on the lines traced during the adminis- 
tration of the first President, under the wise and 
tactful direction of his successor. President Haven, 
it moved on rapidly in its career of prosperity. 
Additions were made to the observatory, to the 
medical building, and to the chemical laboratory. 
A course in Pharmacy and the so-called Latin and 
Scientific course were established. The number of 
students increased rapidly, until in 1866-7 it reached 
twelve hundred and fifty-five. Dr. Haven's genial 
and conciliatory temperament, his felicity of address, 
his versatile adaptability, and his broad and gener- 

[88] 



COMMEMORATIVE ORATION, 1887 

ous theories of education won favor for himself and 
for the University. To the great regret of students. 
Faculties, Regents, and the public, he resigned after 
a brief administration of six years. 

During the two years in which Dr. Frieze occupied 
the executive chair, two most important measures 
were adopted, which broadened very much the 
influence of the University. These were the ad- 
mission of women to all Departments and the 
estabhshment of the system by which students 
are on certain conditions received from high schools 
without special examination. In respect to both 
of these measures we may say that our experience 
of seventeen years has justified most, if not all, 
the expectations of those who advocated them, and 
has removed the doubts and fears of those who 
opposed them or who supported them with hesitancy. 
Hundreds of women have availed themselves of the 
privileges offered them here and have gone forth, 
several of them to foreign lands as missionary 
teachers or missionary physicians, many to various 
parts of our country as teachers in high schools, 
academies, and colleges, and the rest to those various 
duties, whether in professional careers, official posi- 
tions, or in domestic life, which women of culture 
are fitted to discharge. The success of the experi- 
ment of admitting women to this Institution was 
very influential in opening to them the doors of 
many colleges in this country, and was not without 
effect abroad. 

[89] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



The establishment of the "diploma relation with 
the high schools" was one of the most important 
steps ever taken to bring unity into the public 
school system of this State. Superintendent Pierce 
had in his first report wisely urged that all grades 
of schools should be equally under the care of the 
State and supported by it. He was strenuous for 
the organization of the branches of the University, 
so that high school education might be furnished in 
them and teachers might be prepared for the primary 
schools. His only mistake was in throwing upon 
the University fund the expense of this secondary 
school work, when it would have been wise to provide 
for it at least in part from the common school funds. 
The branches having finally been severed from the 
University, the union schools or high schools grew 
up as separate, local organizations, and not as an 
organic part of one system. The voluntary estab- 
lishment of the "diploma connection" between 
the University and the high schools set up a quasi- 
organic relation between them, bridged over the 
space which had separated them, and so left the road 
plain and open for every child to proceed easily 
from the primary school up through the high schools 
and through the University. There is therefore 
now a substantial, if not in all respects a perfectly 
formal, unity in the educational system of the State. 
The plan adopted here, which was an adaptation 
to our needs of the German method of receiving 
students from the gymnasium into the university, 

[90] 



COMMEMORATIVE ORATION, 1887 

has been widely imitated both in the East and in 
the West, though sometimes with modifications 
which have diminished its efficiency. 

During recent years, with an ever enlarging con- 
ception, both on the part of the State and of the 
University, of the functions, opportunities, and 
duties of this Institution, its development has been 
rapid and striking. The work of the long-established 
Departments has been elevated, broadened, and 
enriched, new Departments have been added, com- 
modious buildings have been multiplied, and the 
power of the University has been largely strengthened. 

In the Literary Department there has been a 
great increase in the number and variety of courses 
of instruction offered, the application of laboratory 
methods to the teaching of the sciences has become 
general, the students of engineering have been pro- 
vided with facilities for shopwork, a well-adjusted 
elective system of studies has been introduced, and 
to advanced students large opportunities for spe- 
cializing their work have been furnished. • These 
measures, co-operating with other causes, have 
increased the enthusiasm for study, have brought 
new stimulation to the teachers, have made the 
relations of students and teachers intimate and 
friendly to a degree formerly unknown, and have 
brought the Department to a most gratifying degree 
of efficiency. 

The list of professional schools has been enlarged 
by the organization of the School of Pharmacy, the 

[91] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



Homoeopathic Medical College, and the Dental 
College. In these, as in the older schools, the 
requirements for admission and for graduation 
have been gradually raised, so that the education 
imparted in the several schools is more comprehen- 
sive than ever before. The number of teachers 
and assistants now reaches eighty-three and the 
number of students fifteen hundred and seventy- 
three. 

As upon this glad day we gratefully trace the 
remarkable growth of the University, we find the 
inquiry constantly forced on our minds, to what is 
this wonderful growth due.^* The answer has, I 
trust, been in some degree suggested in what has 
been said. But it may be well to set forth more 
sharply the causes of the great development which 
we so rejoice to see. 

1. First I would name the broad conception, 
which has for the most part been held with distinct- 
ness, of the function and methods of a university. 
The custodians and administrators of this Institution 
have striven to build on a large and generous plan. 
They have happily followed in general the German 
rather than the English ideal of education, but have 
always aimed to adapt the plans to the real wants 
of our time and our country. They have filled 
out the large plan originally sketched as rapidly as 
the means at their disposal would permit. With a 
prudent courage in experimentation and innovation 
they have introduced methods which have been 

[92 1 



COMMEMORATIVE ORATION, 1887 

widely approved and imitated even by institutions 
which were at first severe in their criticisms of them. 
This large and free and generous spirit, in which 
the University has been conducted, has commended 
itself, especially in the West, and has been a source 
of great power. 

2. The authorities of the University have been 
guided throughout its history by the wise principle, 
enunciated early by Superintendent Pierce, that 
men, not bricks and mortar, make a university. 
Certainly there is nothing in the beauty or elegance 
of most of our buildings to awaken any special 
vanity on our part. But from the opening of the 
University there has never been a time when the 
Faculties did not contain able and eminent men, 
and for more than thirty years now passed men of 
national and of European reputation have always 
been found giving instruction in these halls. The 
marvel is that with their meagre salaries such men 
have been willing to remain here. But there has 
been among them an esprit du corps, an appreciation 
of the largeness of the work which falls to this Uni- 
versity, an enjoyment of its free spirit, and a 
consequent devotion to its interests, which have for- 
tunately retained some of our most gifted teachers 
in the face of the strongest pecuniary temptations 
to go elsewhere. The fame of these faithful teachers 
has been an inestimable endowment of the Univer- 
sity, and has drawn pupils from every State and 
Territory of the Union and from every continent 

[93 1 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



of the globe. May the day never come when the 
governing body of this Institution shall lose sight 
of the vital truth that it is on the ability and attain- 
ments of the teacher more than on any or on all 
things else that the fortune of the University depends. 
3. It has doubtless been conducive to the growth 
of the University that the founders organized it on 
the" plan of bringing education within the reach of 
the poor. The early settlers of the State, though 
many of them were well educated, were generally 
men of limited means. They appreciated intellec- 
tual training and desired that it should, if possible, 
be secured by their children. They knew that the 
rich could send their sons away to Eastern colleges. 
But if college education was to be gained by their 
sons, it must be at small cost. They therefore 
naturally and wisely provided that instruction 
should be afforded at a nominal rate. This was a 
most democratic and salutary plan. There could 
have been no greater misfortune to this State than 
such an organization of the higher education as 
should have made it accessible to the rich alone. 
Society is now sufficiently shaken by the antagonisms 
and frictions between the rich and the poor. But 
suppose we had the poor hopelessly doomed to 
comparative ignorance by the costliness of advanced 
education to the pupils, and so had society divided 
into two classes, the one rich and highly educated, 
the other poor and with limited education or none, 
how much more fearful would be their conflicts 

[94] 



COMMEMORATIVE ORATION, 1887 

when they met in the shock of battle ! But here the 
rich and the poor have always sat side by side in 
the class-room. They have associated on terms of 
perfect equality. Brains and character have alone 
determined which should be held in the higher 
esteem. There is no other community in the world 
so wholesomely democratic as one like our body 
of University students. The whole policy of the 
administration of this University has been to make 
life here simple and inexpensive, and so a large 
proportion of our students have always supported 
themselves in whole or in large part by their own 
earnings. They have flocked hither in great num- 
bers because they believed that an excellent education 
could be obtained here by students of very limited 
means. This has always been, and we are proud of 
the fact, the University of the poor. From these 
halls the boys born in the log cabins of the wilderness 
have gone forth armed with the power of well-dis- 
ciplined minds and characters, to fight their way to 
those brilliant successes which mere wealth could 
never have achieved, to the foremost positions in 
church and state. 

4. We gladly recognize the fact that the success 
of the University is largely due to the efficient aid 
of the schools of the State. While the University 
has done much to elevate the character of the 
schools, by sending them as teachers its thoroughly 
trained graduates, it is also true that but for the 
hearty co-operation of the schools, but for the con- 

[95] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



tinual and rapid improvement in their work, it 
would have been impossible for the University to 
push up its standard of work from decade to decade, 
as it has done. Especially has there been a helpful 
improvement in the high schools since the diploma 
relation between them and the University was 
established. There is now a certain unity in the 
scholarly spirit of the schools and that of the Uni- 
versity which is serviceable to the University and, 
we believe, to the schools. But without this fine 
spirit in the schools the University would be seriously 
crippled. The child who enters the primary school 
is now stimulated to hope for the highest education, 
since the way lies open, straight, and clear from his 
school-house to the very doors of the University, 
the way which has been trodden by many as poor 
and as humble as the poorest and humblest in the 
rudest school-house in the Northern woods. 

5. The loyalty and the success of our graduates of 
all Departments have also been most helpful to our 
rapid growth. More than eight thousand in num- 
ber, they have gone to all parts of this land and to 
foreign lands, speaking with loving praise the name 
of their Alma Mater, and illustrating in their lives 
the value of the training they had received under 
our roof. In the great struggle for the nation's 
existence they did their full part, and some of the 
choicest and best, whose names are starred on our 
General Catalogue, poured out their young lives on 
Southern battlefields. Our graduates are found 

[96] 



COMMEMORATIVE ORATION, 1887 

engaged in every worthy pursuit. By their achieve- 
ments they are commending their dear mother not 
only for the mental discipline she gave them, but 
for the brave, earnest, manly spirit which by her 
free methods and by the character of her teachers 
she has nourished in them. The sap and vigor 
of this Western life have always characterized 
this young University and the great body of her 
alumni, and so the earnest, ingenuous youth of the 
West have come here almost instinctively to find 
a congenial home. If sound learning has been im- 
parted here, we believe that we may yet more 
emphatically claim that manliness of character has 
always been developed in these halls. 

W^hile studying to-day the history and develop- 
ment of this Institution, it is pleasant to remember 
that it has not been without a creditable influence 
upon other colleges and universities. Every good 
institution of learning by its life helps every other 
good one. And while in the presence of so many 
honored delegates from other schools of learning, 
who rejoice us by their presence at this hour, we 
gratefully acknowledge the inspiration we have 
received from our sister institutions, we may be 
permitted to recall the testimony which some of 
them have borne to us of the assistance they have 
found in our experiences. Particularly have the 
State universities which have been established in 
all the Western and in some of the Southwestern 
States builded to a considerable degree on the model 

[97] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



of this University. The same causes that contributed 
to our prosperity are now crowning them with success. 
Whatever perils may have beset any of them in 
their earher days, their existence is now assured. 
Not infrequently they have turned hither for counsel, 
and naturally enough have often adopted methods 
which had here been proved wise. As we see these 
State universities attaining to higher usefulness 
and eminence and rejoice in their progress, we think 
it not presumptuous to believe that one of the 
useful services which this Institution has rendered 
is found in the guidance and help which she has 
providentially been able to furnish to these sister 
institutions of the West. 

In the bright history of this Institution we joy- 
fully read a happy augury for her future. With 
such rapid strides has she come forward into the 
front rank of American universities that we in- 
stinctively look for continued and brilliant progress 
in the second half century of life upon which she 
is now entering. We often delight ourselves with 
imagining what the next generation will find here 
when the celebration of the centennial of the Uni- 
versity shall be held. 

While we do not suffer ourselves to doubt that 
the development of the University is to continue, 
we do well to keep in mind, even in these days of 
exuberant joy , the essential condition of her prosperity. 
That condition is the hearty sympathy and support 
of the State of Michigan. The proceeds of the 

[98] 



COMMEMORATIVE ORATION, 1887 

United States land grant and the fees of students 
no longer suffice to meet the current expenses of 
the University. We are obliged to have constant 
aid from the treasury of the State. If the Uni- 
versity is to grow under the present organization, 
that aid must be, not rapidly perhaps, but steadily 
and surely, increased. Should that aid be withheld, 
the Institution would at once shrink from a great 
university with a cosmopolitan constituency and a 
cosmopolitan fame to a local school with a limited 
constituency and a fading reputation. The vital 
question therefore is, if the University persists in 
her old habit of growing, will this Commonwealth 
stand by her and meet her pressing needs .^ All 
these fifty years Cassandras have not been wanting 
who have predicted that the State would in weariness 
abandon the University. Happily these predictions 
have never been fulfilled. Never before, I believe, 
was the University so strongly intrenched in the 
affections of the State. But the sons and daughters 
and friends of the University may even in their 
exhilarating celebrations of this week lay it soberly 
to heart that the prevalence of an intelligent public 
opinion upon the value of the Institution is abso- 
lutely essential to her perpetuity, and that on them 
it mainly depends whether such a public opinion, 
appreciative and sympathetic, shall prevail. The 
great majority of our citizens, the great majority 
of our legislators, never see the University. They 
must know of the scope and worth of its work and 

[99] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



of the considerable sums needed to maintain it, 
even on our most economical methods, mainly as 
they learn all this from you. In a very just sense 
and in a large degree, then, the fortunes of the Uni- 
versity are committed to your hands. That you 
will be faithful to this great trust we do not for a 
moment question. Therefore w^e confidently cherish 
the hope that this great and prosperous Common- 
wealth will, with just pride in the renown and use- 
fulness of this school, continue in all the years to 
come to meet her reasonable requests for support. 

The munificent gifts which during the last few 
years we have received from private benefactors 
also encourage us to believe that the generosity of 
the State will be supplemented by that of large- 
hearted individuals. There is abundant room for 
the most appropriate exercise of private beneficence. 
We cannot doubt that some of our citizens, especially 
some of our alumni, will wish to leave here memorials 
of their abiding interest in the University. - 

And so, full of that faith in the future growth of the 
University, which is begotten by the contemplation 
of her inspiring history of fifty years, by our confi- 
dence in the appreciative generosity of this great, 
wealthy, and growing Commonwealth, and by our 
assurance of the loyalty and devotion of her sons and 
daughters, w^ith joyful enthusiasm, with abounding 
hope, with loving hearts, we bid her Godspeed as 
she enters now upon the second half century of her 
life. 

[100 1 



IV 
STATE UNIVERSITIES 



JUNE 4, 1895 

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE DEDICATION OF 

ACADEMIC HALL AND THE NEW DEPARTMENT 

BUILDINGS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI 

The substance of this Address was also given on anniver- 
sary occasions at the State Universities of Iowa, 
Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota, Illinois, and Ohio 



IV 
STATE UNIVERSITIES 



IN response to your courteous invitation to me to 
address you, it has seemed to me that I might well 
ask you to consider what, in view of its organization, 
are the principal difficulties which the American State 
university has to encounter, what advantages it has 
to commend it, and what needs must be supplied to 
insure its success. 

1. In our present study of State universities it 
will be convenient first to inquire what have been 
their chief embarrassments. 

First. The business of disposing of the lands 
granted by the United States for their support 
has in many cases been badly managed, so that a 
large part of the endowment has been lost. In 
the early history of several of the States, to which 
grants for universities were made, the people did 
not appreciate either the possible importance or 
the future needs of a university, and therefore the 
proper disposition of the lands was not secured. 
It is not surprising that such was the fact. In 
some cases errors of judgment, in others, it is to 
be feared, the greed of speculators, who outwitted 
trustees and regents, caused lamentable sacrifices. 
The lesson should not be lost to the States whose 
lands are still within control. 

[103] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



If we may say so without seeming ungrateful, 
we may express our regret that the General Govern- 
ment, when making grants of lands for universities, 
had not given more of what it was then so easy to 
give. Doubtless when the first grants were made 
at the beginning of the century, of two townships 
to each university, that was believed to be a very 
generous endowment. And so it was for the main- 
tenance of universities according to the standards 
then prevailing. But the progress and elevation of 
the higher education have rendered necessary much 
larger revenues for the support of a university than 
the proceeds from the sales of the lands bestowed 
can furnish. 

Second. A very common criticism on the organ- 
ization of universities by the State is that political 
parties will interfere with them from partisan motives 
and seek to use them in furtherance of party ends. 
Theoretically, that seems possible, but in fact, so 
far as I know, the good sense of our people has 
prevented this, as it has prevented such interference 
with the common schools. I think it may safely 
be predicted that any party which shall attempt to 
use either the universities or the common schools for 
a partisan purpose will lose, as it deserves to lose, 
popular approbation. 

It is true, however, that there is a certain peril 
to the State university from the close relation which 
it holds to the public. If important differences arise 
within its governing board or its Faculties concerning 

[104 1 



STATE UNIVERSITIES 



a line of policy, or concerning the fitness of president 
or professors for their positions, the discussion 
becomes more widespread and general and often 
more impassioned than it does when similar questions 
are before a close corporation which is practically 
responsible to nobody for its actions. Such political 
discussions of university questions are often con- 
ducted in large part by men who are fitted neither 
by reading nor by experience to speak as experts, 
and whose debates are therefore more heated than 
wise. No doubt it is possible to cite cases in which 
serious harm has been done by dragging universities 
and teachers into the public arena to be assailed by 
those who were quite incompetent to pass judgment 
on the question at issue, or were disposed to display 
their gladiatorial skill simply from the malignant 
ambition to pull prominent men down from honorable 
positions, and to cater to that base but too common 
desire to see them bespattered with abuse. 

But after all, while temporary harm and in some 
cases injustice to worthy persons has resulted from 
this exposed and open life of the State university, 
yet I believe that on the whole the university, like 
the general administration of the State, is the better 
and not the worse for being to some extent the 
subject of public discussion. It is thus made known 
to the whole State. The citizens learn that they have 
a responsibility and an interest in it. They cannot 
be expected to bear taxation for its support unless 
its purpose and its management commend them- 

[105 1 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



selves to their favor. And therefore the more frankly 
and fully its life is laid bare to the people, the better. 
The thing it has most to fear is misrepresentation. 
Under the fire of criticism and public discussion 
the State universities have, with some interruption, 
pretty steadily gained, and as a class are more 
vigorous to-day than they have ever been before. 

Third. The State universities have had to contend 
with a more or less widespread impression that the 
conditions of their life are to some extent unfriendly 
to the development of a religious character in the 
students. Not a few men, speaking in the interests 
of denominational colleges, have displayed a pretty 
active zeal in disseminating this impression. The 
majority of those who desire a collegiate education 
for their children prefer to have them surrounded 
by influences which are helpful rather than hurtful 
to their religious life. The belief that such a life is 
discouraged rather than encouraged at any college 
would be an obstacle to its prosperity. 

If a State university were open to this charge, 
it must be from one or both of two causes. It 
might be so because the Regents took action which 
justified the charge, or because the Faculties were 
made up of irreverent men, or from both these causes 
combined. It is said that there is nothing in the 
constitution of a State university to prevent filling 
the board of regents with irreligious or even vicious 
men. Sticking to the letter of the law, this is true. 
Sticking to the letter of the law, it is equally true 

[106] 



STATE UNIVERSITIES 



that there is nothing to prevent us from filHng the 
judicial bench with rascals. But, in fact, under the 
actual working of our laws, we do elect or appoint 
to the honorable and generally unrequited post of 
regents, men who fairly represent the better senti- 
ment of the State in regard to morals and religion, 
just as we do generally elect to the bench men fairly 
representing the higher stratum of character and 
talent of the bar. The public sentiment of all our 
States is friendly to virtue and religion, and desires 
the cultivation of them in the young in a reasonable 
and catholic way, and it will not long sustain in 
power as guardians of our schools of learning those 
who are actively opposed to this sentiment. 

As to the Faculties, it may be said without fear 
of contradiction that they are as a rule composed 
of men of exemplary life and of reverent spirit. 
Men of a different make do not generally incline to 
teaching as a permanent calling. If they do, they 
are rarely chosen to professorships in our higher 
institutions of learning. A large proportion of the 
teachers in the State universities with which I am 
familiar, as in* all other American colleges and uni- 
versities, are always actively engaged in work in 
church and Sunday school and in the religious meet- 
ings of students. I know of no kind of legitimate 
religious influence exercised on students by professors 
in any college which devout professors in our State 
universities may not and do not exercise, unless an 
exception be made in respect to religious services, 

[107] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



which students are in some colleges compelled to 
attend. And in my opinion the compulsory attend- 
ance on such services of students as old as those 
usually found in our State universities is of very 
questionable spiritual benefit. 

It is, however, true that denominational colleges 
have one advantage over State universities in attract- 
ing religious students, particularly those who intend 
to study for the ministry. These colleges are 
generally furnished with scholarships endowed for 
the special benefit of such students. And further- 
more those devout people who have a particular 
interest in the college controlled by their denomina- 
tions are active in impressing candidates for the 
ministry of their communion with the belief that it 
is their duty to attend that college rather than the 
unsectarian university. These are, I think, the 
main reasons why the State universities do not 
furnish so large a relative number of graduates 
to the ministry as the denominational colleges, 
though they do compare favorably in this regard 
with some of the larger Eastern institutions, as, 
for instance, Yale and Harvard. 

But with regard to the whole subject of the 
religious influences in and about the State university, 
I think it is time a frank and honest word was 
spoken to Christian men. All institutions of what- 
ever kind are in the end controlled and managed 
by the persons who are interested in them and 
who take pains to shape their policy. If all men 

[108] 



STATE UNIVERSITIES 



who have at heart the dissemination of wholesome 
rehgious influences in the State hold themselves 
aloof from the State universities and content them- 
selves with criticising them, it may fairly be expected 
that the control of them will fall into the hands of 
men of different views. No one can reasonably 
doubt that the State universities are here to stay, 
for good or for ill. In accepting the United States 
grants of land for the maintenance of the university, 
each State has in reality bound itself to support such 
an institution. However, the States in addition 
have invested so much money in the plant, and so 
strong a sentiment in favor of the universities has 
been created, that they are certain to continue in 
some form. Is it not then the part of common 
sense for all the good men of the State, however 
interested any of them may be in the support of 
other colleges, to exercise their legitimate influence 
as citizens in determining the policy of the univer- 
sity? In this prosperous state, whose future great- 
ness is assured, it is certain that whatever your 
denominational colleges may do, there will be work 
enough for the university to do — much of it work 
which the colleges are not likely to be able to do. 
See to it, citizens of the State, that the university is 
sustained by the sympathetic and active interest of 
all good men. 

Fourth. The State universities have suffered from 
a certain instability of plan and purpose. This has 
resulted in part, as in the case of many indepen- 

[109 1 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



dent agricultural colleges, from our inexperience in 
conducting such institutions. But it has also some- 
times happened because one Legislature has given 
the means to establish some department or some kind 
of work and the next Legislature has failed to con- 
tinue the needed appropriations. This uncertainty 
of plan is greatly to be deplored. It shakes the con- 
fidence of the students and of the public in the wisdom 
of the administration. It creates in the teachers 
a kind of solicitude which is in a high degree detri- 
mental to their work. We have now had experience 
enough so that we ought to be fairly agreed on what 
is the proper scope of the work of the university. 
We should be careful in filling out the broadest plan 
to undertake no department or work until there is 
a high probability that the time is ripe for it, and 
that it can have a permanent support if it proves 
successful. One Legislature, of course, cannot bind 
its successor to continue its appropriations. But 
the public mind may come to be as well settled, and 
in most States it is as well settled, concerning the 
necessity of continuing certain kinds of university 
work, as it is concerning the necessity of continuing 
the maintenance of prisons and asylums. And 
certainly a Legislature may not ruthlessly check the 
development of a department which has been begun 
in good faith by its predecessor, and which is 
achieving good results. Still, I fear that this danger 
cannot be wholly escaped whenever a university is 
dependent on appropriations renewed annually or 

[110] 



STATE UNIVERSITIES 



biennially by Legislatures. But it is well enough 
to speak plainly on this subject and to remind 
Legislatures that this instability of plan is a real and 
serious misfortune. The best plan to be devised 
for securing this stabihty of support is the enact- 
ment of a law providing for a tax of a fraction of a 
mill upon the property of the State. Experience 
shows that this tax law is not likely to be repealed, 
and, of course, the sum increases as the State grows 
wealthy, and so keeps pace in some degree with the 
increasing needs of a growing and prosperous uni- 
versity. Laws of this kind are now in force in Ohio, 
Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska, Colo- 
rado, and California. 

We have thus considered, and with the utmost 
frankness, some of the chief difficulties which have 
thus far beset the path of the State universities. 

Let us now consider some of the advantages which 
have accrued to State universities and to the public 
from their peculiar organization. 

First. Most of these universities have saved to 
one if not to two generations the advantages of such 
an education as would otherwise not have been within 
their reach. The settlers of these Western States 
were poor, but generally intelligent and fairly edu- 
cated. Not a few of them were graduates of colleges. 
They appreciated the value of advanced education. 
They desired it for their children. But they had 
not the means to send their children to the East 
or to found and maintain well-equipped colleges at 

[111] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



home. The national endowment, however, supple- 
mented in some cases by gifts of land by the States, 
sufficed for the founding of institutions of collegiate 
grade and for the development of them within a 
few years to a strength which no college dependent 
on private benefactions could have reached for many 
years. But for the State universities their children, 
and perhaps their children's children, would have 
looked in vain for the help of a college furnished for 
the excellent and varied work now done in this and 
other similar institutions. They have thus enabled 
the poor to gain an education, and in the days when 
these new States have greatly needed educated men. 
The few rich men could easily have sent their sons 
and daughters to Eastern colleges. It was of com- 
paratively little consequence to their children 
whether the State provided a scheme for higher edu- 
cation. But it was of the first consequence to the 
children of the hardy settler who was rescuing a 
farm from the wilderness or the prairie. And it was 
of even greater consequence to the State that its 
population was not divided sharply into two classes 
— the men rich and educated and the men poor and 
ignorant. Whenever such a division exists you have 
all the elements of discord, strife, and civil war. 
But give the poor boy with brains and character 
an education as good as the rich boy can have and 
you need not fear an undue ascendancy of the rich. 
The chances are, as all history shows, that the poor 
boy, the son of the day-laborer or of the washer- 

[112] 



STATE UNIVERSITIES 



woman, will take the precedence of the rich boy, 
whether in church or in state. If the contrary is 
the fact in any case, the rich boy deserves to lead, 
and his leadership causes no heartburnings or 
conflict. 

Second. The State university crowns and com- 
pletes the public school system, and by strengthen- 
ing it blesses the State. It is constantly exerting an 
inspiring and lifting power on the public schools. 
It does this by furnishing competent teachers for 
the high schools. It is a maxim of experienced 
educators that a teacher ought to have received a 
more advanced education than is given in the school 
which he teaches. Those high schools which have 
relied simply on their own graduates for teachers 
have made a grave mistake. Such teachers cannot, 
as a rule, bring to the school the stimulus which a 
competent college graduate can impart. The State 
universities in most of the Western States have 
naturally come into a closer, more nearly organic 
relation with the schools than the denominational 
college can establish. In this State and elsewhere the 
university has established relations with the high 
schools most fruitful of good to the schools, as well 
as to the university. The schools have been in- 
cited and helped to larger and better work. A 
virtual unity in the State education system has been 
secured. The power of this unity is felt by the 
youngest and humblest scholar in the most primary 
school in the state. Every child, even the poorest, 

[113] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



knows that this generous State has opened and made 
clear and easy to him the way from the modest 
school-house to and through the university. 

Who can say in how many souls this knowledge 
is to-day kindling an ambition and moulding a 
purpose which shall give you gifted leaders in every 
branch of human activity? For, thank God, this 
gift of genius is bestowed with no partial hand. It 
is as likely to be found in the hut of sods as in the 
marble palace. And when with your lower schools 
you have kindled in the heart of a child the un- 
quenchable flame of a worthy ambition for larger 
and richer intellectual culture, are we to starve his 
soul on the meagre fare of the common school? 
Will we say, *'Thus far shalt thou go in this divine 
quest after knowledge, but no farther"? If you 
are thus to tantalize him; if you are thus to fire his 
holy passion and then furnish him no means of grati- 
fying it, one might almost say that you had better 
never made him conscious of the illimitable powers 
within him. At any rate you can do nothing nobler, 
nothing more justifiable on the grounds of regard for 
the public good, nothing which will prove more 
beneficial to your State than to introduce him to 
the treasures, the stimulation, the inspiration of 
a university like this. 

To reap the fullest benefits from its common 
schools, the State should crown them with the 
university and give a unity and completeness to 
the whole educational system. The public schools 

[114] 



STATE UNIVERSITIES 



find their logical sequence in the university. 
Really the same arguments which justify the main- 
tenance of the pubhc high school justify the public 
support of the university. The line which divides 
them is constantly changing. The high school 
to-day teaches branches which the university taught 
yesterday. Hardly any one now advocates limiting 
public education to the elementary branches. All 
recognize the fact that society must have a large 
number of men and women whose education has 
been carried far beyond those branches. When 
society has furnished such persons with this advanced 
education, society reaps the benefits quite as fully 
as they. The advantages of such education cannot 
be confined to the possessors of it. The teacher and 
the physician bless others by their labors even more 
than they reward themselves. Those who have 
gone forth from these halls are returning to the 
State far more than what their education has cost 
the State, by their active and intelligent lives, by 
becoming centres of intellectual fight and stimulus 
in various parts of the State, by their influence in 
helping shape a sound public opinion, by their 
sympathetic support of public schools, and by all 
the thousand ways in which a person of cultivation 
and character blesses the community of which he is 
a part. 

Third. The State university with its compara- 
tively ample resources has not only furnished a 
good college education at an earlier date than it 

[115] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



would otherwise have been secured in most of our 
Western States, but it has furnished a greater variety 
of instruction in the collegiate department and has 
also afforded instruction in technical and profes- 
sional studies. Most of the Western colleges not 
sustained by the State have been compelled by their 
narrow means to do their work with small and over- 
tasked faculties, and to restrict the range and 
variety of their work more than they could have 
desired. The larger endowment of the State uni- 
versities has enabled most of them to make more 
generous provision for teaching than those colleges, 
to employ a larger corps of well-trained instructors, 
to furnish better laboratories and apparatus for 
teaching science by the most approved modern 
methods, to give instruction in engineering and in 
other applications of science to the arts, and in 
several cases to establish schools of law, medicine, 
pharmacy, and agriculture. They have thus brought 
within reach of all the citizens of the State at a nomi- 
nal cost to them every kind of higher education, 
except theology, which is required for the best civili- 
zation of the age. They have stimulated the other 
colleges and every kind of institution of learning 
to a higher standard of attainment than they would 
otherwise have reached. By co-operation with our 
excellent public school system they have almost 
entirely saved the West from that wretched sham 
which long aflflicted the East, the so-called female 
seminary, which gave girls the only chance they had 

[116 1 



STATE UNIVERSITIES 



for education, but which in so many cases gave only 
the thinnest veneer of an education. 

In view of what has been accomphshed by the 
State universities in their comparatively brief history 
and of their promise of much larger usefulness in 
the future, have we any words but those of com- 
mendation for the wise and good men who, in laying 
the foundation of these new States, made generous 
and far-sighted provision for the substantially free 
education of every boy and every girl, not only in 
the common school, but also in the university? The 
generations shall rise up and call them blessed. 
The States which find in every hamlet and on so 
many farms men and women with minds trained 
for the most intelligent discharge of every duty of 
life and for fulfilling with wisdom all the responsi- 
bilities of citizenship will ever gratefully remember 
that through the provision of the fathers they have 
come to realize the Platonic ideal of states, in which 
philosophers are kings. Not wells flowing with oil, 
nor mines teeming with silver and gold, nor plains 
covered with flocks and herds so enrich a state as 
noble men and noble women, equipped by training 
and culture to meet all the demands and high oppor- 
tunities of our Christian civilization. That the 
State university is helping in a conspicuous degree 
to make her sons and daughters such men and such 
women must be its abiding glory, of which it cannot 
be robbed. 

Fourth. Even an institution which is rendering so 
[117] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



great and useful a service as the State university 
can succeed in its beneficent work only in case the 
conditions of success are furnished. It has certain 
inevitable needs, which must be supplied. Let us 
see what its principal needs are. 

1. Its affairs must be well administered by its 
board of curators, its chief executive officer, and its 
faculties. This may seem a commonplace remark. 
But an explanation of it will relieve it of its common- 
place aspect. I mean to say that the proper admin- 
istration of a university is a profession, a special 
business, which calls for experience and certain 
peculiar gifts in the administrators, and especially in 
the executive. The administration of the old typical 
colleges was comparatively simple. The curriculum 
of study was stereotyped. The Faculty was small, 
the income needed was not large. The public, 
regarding it as something, if not sacred, yet as 
mysterious to them, and concerning them but little, 
never ventured to criticise any of its methods or its 
general policy. In fact they gave very little thought 
to it. Almost any clergyman who could make a 
good appearance in the pulpit of his denomination 
and teach from text-books the elements of intellectual 
and moral philosophy could fill the presidency accept- 
ably. The trustees were seen at the college only 
during the crowded hours of the Commencement 
season, and their business was usually performed 
in the most perfunctory way. 

How different is the case with the State university, 
[118] 



STATE UNIVERSITIES 



and, indeed, with many universities to-day. The 
courses of study are varied and manifold. They re- 
quire large Faculties and costly appliances. The 
annual expenditures are many times those of the 
college of other days. Not only must collegiate 
education be furnished by the university, but in 
most cases technical and professional training. 
Since it is under the control and dependent, in some 
degree, on the appropriations of the State, it is at 
once the pleasure and the duty of its oflScers to lay 
its affairs open to the public and to take all proper 
measures to keep the public acquainted with its 
operations. It must invite inspection and challenge 
criticism. It must be ready at all times to justify 
its policy before the people. Its curators, therefore, 
cannot well be so neglectful of their duties as many 
college trustees permit themselves to be. They 
should keenly feel themselves responsible to the 
public for the manner in which they execute their 
trust. They should have meetings frequently enough 
to understand the affairs of the university and to 
decide upon the scope of its work and its general 
policy. They may safely leave, and practically 
they must leave, the details of the work inside the 
university to the Faculties, reserving to themselves, 
of course, the right of ultimate control. Consider- 
ing that they have generally been men who have 
engrossing business pursuits or heavy professional 
cares of their own, and that their labors as regents 
have been unrequited save by their consciousness 

[119 1 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



of useful service, it must be admitted that they have 
for the most part been very faithful to their duties. 
2. It is in the highest degree desirable that the 
State university should, so far as possible, be under- 
stood and appreciated by the people of the State. 
To accomplish this is not easy. The proportion of 
the citizens of any state who can pursue their studies 
at any university or college is so small, the number 
of them who can ever even visit its builings and 
grounds is so limited, that it is very diflScult to give 
to the great masses of the people an accurate idea 
of the precise nature of the work done at the univer- 
sity, much less of the method and spirit in which it is 
done. There is, therefore, a not unnatural tendency 
on the part of some to suppose that the university 
is a sort of aristocratic institution, intended to confer 
special privileges on a chosen few, and that it is con- 
ducted with extravagance. No pains should be 
spared by regents, teachers and students to correct 
erroneous impressions and disseminate correct 
information on these points. By speech, by official 
reports, by the aid of the press, the indisputable 
facts should be made known, that the overwhelming 
majority of the students in every one of these 
institutions are the children of parents who are 
poor, or of very moderate means: that a very large 
proportion have earned by hard toil and by heroic 
self-denial the amount needed to maintain them- 
selves in the most frugal manner during their 
university course, and that so far from being an 

[ 120 1 



STATE UNIVERSITIES 



aristocratic institution there is no more truly 
democratic institution in the world than the univer- 
sity, none in which wealth and birth pass for so 
little and brains and character for so much. So 
far as practicable, without neglect of their classes, 
the university teachers should improve such oppor- 
tunities as offer to address the people of the State, 
especially upon educational, scientific or literary 
themes, to manifest their interest in the public 
schools, and to show the people in every proper 
way that it is their interests which the university 
and all connected with it desire to subserve. I 
deem it of great consequence that the financial 
conduct of the institution should, with the utmost 
frankness, be made known to the State by pub- 
lishing official reports. The more thoroughly the 
people come to feel that the State university is 
their university, sustained in large part by their 
money, and for the benefit of their children, and 
through these children for the benefit of the State, 
and that it is economically administered, the more 
strong and secure is the life of the university. 

Third. The university needs as a condition of 
success that provision should be made for its growth 
and development. In this prosperous western life, 
which increases wealth and population at so rapid 
a pace, the demands on the State university must 
constantly and rapidly increase. In these circum- 
stances, for the university to stop growing is to 
retrograde and begin to die. If it is not continually 

[ 121 ] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 

enlarging its facilities for instruction and improving 
its methods so as to keep abreast with other 
first-rate universities in the quality of its work, 
then it is relatively, if not absolutely, going behind 
and bringing discredit on itself and on the State. 
If the State is not only willing that it should grow, 
but proud that it should grow, then the State had 
better kill it at once. Instant death is greatly to 
be preferred to death by starvation or torture. 
Men of high worth and noble spirit will not long 
work in an institution which is forbidden to grow 
and improve. If it is to have a wholesome growth, 
it must be conducted on some well-considered plan. 
It must be so supported and administered as to have 
a certain steadiness of life. Its abler teachers, whose 
ability and reputation give it a name, should be so 
compensated, and should be so sustained by the 
governing board and by the public, as to have com- 
fort and a sense of security in their positions. It 
cannot be too emphatically declared that it is not 
fine buildings nor great colleges that make a univer- 
sity, but gifted and learned men, endowed with the 
power and fired with the love of teaching and inspir- 
ing their pupils. If these can be retained on condi- 
tions which allow them to be reasonably free from 
solicitude to enjoy intellectual independence, and 
to throw their whole energy and enthusiasm into 
their work, students will flock to their rooms, sit 
delighted at their feet, and catch their spirit of 
scholarship and industry. And wherever you have 

[ 122] 



STATE UNIVERSITIES 



great teachers and enthusiastic students you have 
a university, even though they dwell in log cabins 
and teach and study upon the open prairie. 

Nor should it be forgotten by any of us, especially 
should it not be forgotten by the students themselves, 
how largely the growth and prosperity of a university 
are dependent on the students. The Regents and 
the Faculties do not make a university. The Regents, 
the teachers, and the students make a university. 
It is of the first consequence that the students 
appreciate the responsibility which rests on them 
in making a good name for the university and in 
promoting its prosperity. Nor are they generally 
delinquent in this regard. If occasionally they are 
tempted into youthful indiscretions or if, with that 
affectation of cynicism which sometimes appears 
with the first sprouting of the beard, they indulge in 
over-wise criticism of their elders, yet as a rule with 
a beautiful enthusiasm they sound abroad the praises 
of their favorite teachers, stand loyally by the colors 
of their institution in the face of all opponents, and 
gladly do what they may for its honor and glory. 
This comes perhaps generally from a wholesome and 
hearty impulse rather than from a consciousness of 
the power they really have to commend the university 
in all parts of the State and so to build it up. The 
ardent affection of the graduates of a university is a 
richer treasure than the uncounted gold of a stranger. 
Who so well as these students that I see before me 
can perform that needed work of which I have before 

[123] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



spoken, of making this University understood and 
appreciated by the thousands who can never see 
its real Hfe? As the years go on, the students who 
have dwelt in these halls will be found in every city 
and town and hamlet and rural district in the State. 
If everywhere they shall have some good word for 
the dear mother, there will soon exist everywhere that 
public pride in the university which is the best 
guarantee that it shall have the means of healthy 
growth. 

Fifth. Does not this study of the difficulties, 
the advantages, and the needs of the State university 
inspire us with hope for its future? The difficulties 
are not insuperable, the advantages are positive 
and great, the needs can for the most part be readily 
supplied in these prosperous Western States. Each 
of these states has the territory and the resources of 
a European kingdom. There should be in each at 
least one vigorous university. Germany has one 
for each two million inhabitants. Most of these 
states will at no distant day each have more inhabi- 
tants than that number. Some of them have more 
already. Can any one who measures the strength 
the State universities have already attained cherish 
a doubt that the one great university in each one 
of these States, if there is to be one great university 
in each, will be the State university.^ Then the State 
in its legislation and the university in shaping its 
development should lay their plans in view of this 
fact. 

f 124 1 



STATE UNIVERSITIES 



Think of what a future this State may have before 
it. In area she is larger than England and Wales, 
and more than twice as large as Scotland. The 
population is about half larger than that of the 
kingdom of Denmark. Lying in the very heart of 
the continent, favored with a matchless climate, 
watered by the two great rivers of the continent, 
teeming with agricultural, mining, and manufacturing 
resources, which can hardly be measured, with the 
amplest communications by river and by rail for 
the transportation of her abundant products to the 
markets of the world, with a population drawn from 
the choicest stocks of other States and of the old 
world, a population abounding in energy, lofty in 
character, with a history lustrous with the achieve- 
ments of men renowned in every honorable vocation, 
w^hat elements of an imperial State, what assurance 
of a brilliant future are wanting to her? But with 
all these advantages, one thing she must make sure 
of, or they will prove powerless to retain for her 
that commanding position she has long held, and 
which you are hoping and predicting she will continue 
to hold. That one thing is a goodly number of 
men trained by the best education which the age 
can furnish them for leadership in all departments 
of human activity, for eminence in all branches of 
civic life. In the hot competition of these times 
those communities and States which produce the 
best intelligence and the loftiest character will 
press to the front. The whole nation is looking to 

[125] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



the West, which is marching to the front with such 
tremendous strides, to wield the preponderating 
influence in guiding our national affairs and shaping 
our national destiny. But the West cannot win this 
high honor and does not deserve it unless, while 
abounding in natural prosperity, she can rear genera- 
tions of broad-minded, thoroughly trained, high- 
souled men to speak and act for her in all posts of 
responsibility in the hour of the nation's need. In 
this great work may this State and her university 
do their full part. 



[126] 



THE OLD COLLEGE AND THE 
NEW UNIVERSITY 



JULY 1, 1899 

THE FOUNDER'S DAY ADDRESS DELIVERED ON 

THE OCCASION OF THE TWENTY-NINTH 

CONVOCATION OF THE UNIVERSITY 

OF CHICAGO 



THE OLD COLLEGE AND THE NEW 
UNIVERSITY 

IVl AY I allow my personal experience to suggest my 
theme to-day? Exactly fifty years ago I went forth 
from college with my diploma, as these graduates go 
forth at this hour, to test in the conflicts of life the 
worth of myself and of the discipline and scanty 
learning which my diploma represented. As I am one 
of the comparatively small number in this assembly 
who cherish vivid recollections of the life, organiza- 
tion, and methods of the American college of half a 
century ago, it has occurred to me that it might not 
be altogether uninteresting or unprofitable to you if 
I should attempt to set before you some of the con- 
trasts between the college of 1849 and the university 
of 1899. I say the college of 1849 because, although 
some small colleges called themselves universities, the 
title on the catalogues of the two largest institutions. 
Harvard and Yale, for 1849-50 is college, and not 
university. 

It is surprising how little the college of the middle 
of this century differed in its general plan from that 
of a century before, or even from that of two cen- 
turies before. The English colonists who established 
the New England colleges naturally built them on the 
model of a college of Cambridge or of Oxford Univer- 

[ 129 ] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



sity. Master and tutors with titles slightly changed, 
dormitories, with hours in rooms to be strictly kept. 
Commons Hall, where tutors and students shared the 
simple fare, the ancient classics, the mathematics, 
logic, intellectual and moral philosophy, evidences of 
Christianity as the principal studies, comparative 
seclusion from the outside world, college prayers at 
dawn attended by half-dressed students not always 
in a devout frame, after that a recitation for an hour 
before breakfast — such were some of the marked 
features of college life. 

It is no exaggeration to say that during the last 
fifty years, one might even say during the last thirty 
years, there has been more discussion of the methods 
and aims of collegiate and university training than 
had been known from the planting of the New Eng- 
land colonies down to 1850. There was nowhere 
such questioning of the wisdom of the one course 
everywhere followed as was raised so long ago as 
Bacon's time concerning the English colleges. For 
that great man, to whose treatise on the Advance- 
ment of Learning even now so little can be added, 
complains that "the exclusive dedicating of founda- 
tions and donations to professory learning hath not 
only had a malign aspect and influence upon the 
growth of sciences, but hath also been prejudicial 
to states and governments." "For hence," he adds, 
" it proceedeth that princes find a solitude in regard 
of able men to serve them in cases of state, because 
there is no education collegiate which is free, where 

[130] 



COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY 

such as were so disposed might give themselves to 
histories, modern languages, books of policy, and 
civil discourse, and other like enablements unto 
service of estate." That criticism of Bacon might 
have been applied with almost equal force to the 
American colleges down to the fifth decade of this 
century. 

The only important exception to the common 
form of organization and work in the United States 
was the University of Virginia, which was opened 
in 1825. As you all know, Mr. Jefferson devised 
the plan of that institution. It is said that he was 
largely influenced by the suggestions of a distin- 
guished Frenchman, M. Dupont de Nemours, in 
perfecting the scheme. It bears the impress of 
a mind familiar with continental universities. It 
anticipated, to a considerable degree, the methods 
of the universities, which allow elections of different 
courses of studies, and which confer degrees as well 
upon proficients in science as upon those who have 
completed courses in the ancient classics. From 
some cause the experiment in Virginia, though it 
proved reasonably satisfactory to the citizens of 
that State, was for a long time nowhere imitated. 
TVTiether this failure to commend itself to general 
favor was in any degree owing to the somewhat 
widespread distrust of Mr. Jefferson as a theorist 
in science and education, or to the want of the ample 
means required to establish and maintain an in- 
stitution on his plan, I cannot say. But probably 

[131] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



not a dozen college instructors in the country were 
then prepared to believe that any considerable change 
in the American college system could be an improve- 
ment. It was apparently from deference to the 
earnest wishes of Mr. Jefferson, to whom the uni- 
versity owed its very existence, and who bestowed 
years of the most patient labor upon it, rather than 
to a deliberate approval of his scheme by his asso- 
ciates, that the institution took on a form then so 
novel. Mr. Madison used to urge, we are told, in 
the meetings of the Board, that "as the whole design 
originated with Mr. Jefferson, and the chief responsi- 
bility for success or failure was his, it was but fair 
to allow him carry it into effect in his own way." 

I have never heard that the establishment of the 
University of Virginia gave rise to any general 
discussion of college methods in the journals or the 
academic circles of that day. But a few minds were 
soon considering some of the questions which have 
since engaged public attention. There were a few 
earnest debates upon the importance of the ancient 
classics, the most notable of which was that between 
Mr. Grimke and Mr. Legare, of South Carolina. 
The corporation of Yale College was asked to con- 
sider whether the study of Greek and Latin should 
be dispensed with. Amherst College actually an- 
nounced a course in which no classical study was 
required, but soon abandoned it. In 1825 George 
Ticknor warmly urged Harvard College to open an 
unlimited choice of studies to undergraduates and 

[132] 



COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY 

suggested other changes in the curriculum. At 
about that time Harvard did open a limited range 
of options to the students. 

In 1829 the Faculty of the University of Vermont 
drew up a paper on collegiate work which attracted 
much attention. It was the fruit of the earnest 
deliberation of a corps of gifted teachers, among 
whom were James Marsh and Joseph Torrey. Its 
most valuable feature was its careful arrangement 
of studies in a philosophic order, based on a pro- 
found study of the laws of mental development and 
of the nature and value of different branches of 
knowledge. It may even now be read with interest 
and profit. 

But it was, so far as I know, to that vigorous and 
inspiring teacher. President Wayland, of Brown 
University, that we owe the earliest volume on the 
subject of American collegiate education. In 1842, 
when the state of Rhode Island was rent with civil 
commotions, he prepared his little book entitled 
"Thoughts on the Collegiate System in the United 
States." He occupied himself more with exposing 
the defects in our system than in suggesting remedies 
for the evils. But the first step toward finding the 
remedy is a clear perception of the evil. It may 
fairly be claimed that Dr. Wayland was one of the 
first, if not the first, to make a careful study of 
the weak points in our traditionary system. But 
his treatise, though it was read with attention and 
interest, did not produce any immediate effect upon 

[133] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



the American collegiate system. For nearly ten 
years more, life moved on in the quiet old way under 
every college roof. 

But suddenly in 1850 the academic circles were 
startled by the ringing summons to reconsider their 
methods of work. The fearless and self-reliant 
thinker who in 1842 saw so many defects in our 
colleges now came forward, full of hope and enthu- 
siasm, to offer remedies. His glowing words 
kindled hot discussions on every side. A few were 
with him, but many were against him. No single 
treatise or paper which appeared before Dr. Way- 
land's Report to the Corporation of Brown Univer- 
sity in 1850, perhaps none which has appeared since, 
has awakened so fruitful discussions as that. It 
began, is it too much to say that it caused, that 
agitation in academic circles which has resulted in 
some modification of the course in every college 
in the land. From the day of its appearance until 
now, not only educational journals, but the secular 
and religious journals, the magazines and reviews, 
college faculties, the patrons of colleges, all that 
great company of people who are interested in the 
character of our higher education, have been vig- 
orously arguing to determine what the American 
college and university should aim to be and to do. 

Some of the most salient recommendations in this 
report were these: The abolition of the fixed term of 
four years of study as the requisite to a degree; the 
opening of large choice of studies to students; the 

[134] 



COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY 

recognition by a degree of the completion of other 
than classical work; the establishment of courses in 
the application of science to the arts ; the endeavor 
to meet in every way every variety of intellectual 
want. Unhappily the funds raised for the reorgan- 
ization of the college were not enough to give full 
execution to the plan, and some of the details were 
not wisely arranged. But the ideas of larger liberty 
in the election of studies and of an ampler oppor- 
tunity for scientific training and of a more just 
^ estimate of the relative value of scientific training 
to the purely classical, all of which were emphasized 
in Dr. Wayland's report of 1850, were never again 
lost sight of in the discussions of American collegiate 
schemes. That great leader in shaping the educa- 
tional ideas of the West, President Tappan, who was 
deeply inspired by Dr. Wayland's report, immedi- 
ately on entering upon his duties at the University 
of Michigan in 1852 set up the scientific course 
parallel to the classical, and soon after established 
a school of engineering. All the State universities of 
the West have followed in the same path. Harvard, 
which in George Ticknor's time was the first to make 
a small beginning in offering elections in studies, 
was under its present energetic president the leader 
in throwing open the widest elections to the candi- 
dates for the degree of Bachelor of Arts. It is 
not my purpose to trace in detail the evolution of 
the remarkable changes which have taken place in 
college and university life since 1849, but rather to 

f 135 1 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



direct attention to the contrast between the college 
of that time and the university of our day. 

Half a century ago the curricula of the various 
colleges differed very little from one another. Four 
years of studies, almost the whole of which were 
rigorously prescribed for every student, regardless of 
his tastes, aptitudes, or plans of life, were laid out 
in substantially the same way in every institution. 
Most of us, therefore, received whatever help there 
is in the discipline of doing or failing to do some work 
uninteresting or impossible to us. The instruction 
in science was for the most part meagre and addressed 
to the memory rather than to powers of observation 
and reasoning. It was generally taught from text- 
books, and in the case of physics and chemistry 
enlivened by some lectures with experiments which 
enlightened the hearers by their failures almost as 
often as by their success. Chemical laboratories in 
colleges were almost or quite unknown. I think 
the only one opened in 1849 was that in the Lawrence 
Scientific School, but it does not appear from the 
Harvard Catalogue that it was open to college stu- 
dents. Laboratories for other scientific studies than 
chemistry were not thought of at all. It will readily 
be seen that the method of scientific instruction 
has been entirely revolutionized. In the last half 
century no more important step in education has 
been taken than in the universal introduction of the 
laboratory methods in the sciences. Of course with 
this change has come the appropriation of much more 

[136] 



COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY 

time to the pursuit of science by men who wish to 
become experts in it. Under the old system it was 
possible to obtain only a smattering of any science. 
One third of a year was usually given to each, some- 
times only one sixth. 

It is obvious that with a rigid curriculum, in which 
every one was obliged to do a little of many things, it 
was impossible to give to some branches the time for 
any but the most elementary work, or even to touch 
some branches to which much time is now devoted. 
For instance, Political Economy in 1849 was pursued 
for only one third of the college year in Yale and 
Brown, and in Harvard was coupled with Story's 
Commentaries on the Constitution as one study for 
half the college year. No ampler instruction in that 
subject was then attainable in any college. Modern 
and mediaeval History, which has now become so 
important a branch in our universities, then received 
scant attention. The Ya'le Catalogue of 1849-50 
carries the name of 'no Professor of History. The 
same can be said of BrowTi, though the Professor 
of Rhetoric did give some of his time to the teaching 
of HistoVy. The Catalogue of Harvard was adorned 
in 1849 with the great name of Jared Sparks as 
Professor of Ancient and Modern History. But 
I doubt if any other college in the land had a chair 
of History fifty years ago. English Literature fared 
as badly as History. You will not find it specifically 
named in the curriculum of any college of that day. 
The Professor of Rhetoric was expected to direct 

[137] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



the attention of his pupils to some of the great 
authors in illustration of his teachings. But the 
systematic study of them was rarely called for, except 
as they might be named as the subjects of essays or 
speeches. The opportunities for the study of the 
Modern Languages were very restricted. In Yale 
College for two thirds of a year they could be pur- 
sued. In Brown University French was offered for 
one year and German for a short term. In Harvard 
much more generous provision was made. But in 
most colleges not more than a year's instruction in 
French or German was given, and in some none at 
all was furnished. Of course almost never could 
what we now call advanced undergraduate work in 
Mathematics or Science or Philosophy be attained. 
Several branches now taught in all stronger institu- 
tions were not taught at all; for example. Compara- 
tive Philology, Early English, Pedagogy, Sociology, 
Sanscrit, and the Semitic tongues. The range of 
college work was restricted to a degree which must 
seem to the student of our day as scarcely credible. 
The methods then pursued in instruction in science 
are not now tolerated in a decent high school. 

The favorite expression employed then to desig- 
nate the relation sustained by the President or the 
Faculty of the college was in loco parentis. This 
expression had come down from the days when the 
President inflicted corporal punishment on recal- 
citrant pupils. Under cover of it stern executives, 
in a spirit sometimes not lacking in arbitrariness, 

[138] 



COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY 

laid a great variety of penalties, including pecuniary 
fines, upon the youths who were subject to their 
parental care. Bearded men were kept under a 
minute surveillance night and day, such as is prac- 
tised now only in boarding schools for small boys. 
Their rooms w^ere often visited twice a day by a 
Professor to see that they were rigorously keeping 
hours prescribed for study. Absences from prayers, 
which were held before light in the winter mornings 
and at four o'clock in the afternoon, and absences 
from rooms at the time of the Professor's calls, 
were punished by fines, which increased in rate 
as the number of absences increased. A waggish 
classmate of mine, who was studying the laws of 
prices in Political Economy, once complained to the 
college authorities that college prayers were the only 
article he ever bought which were dearer at whole- 
sale than at retail. The life in Commons Hall, where 
at meal times the impulsiveness of the hungry throng 
was restrained only by the presence of one tutor who 
sat at the Seniors' table, was conducive to anything 
but elegance of manners and soundness of digestion. 
The distance which separated the students from 
members of the Faculty in their personal and social 
intercourse was greater than that which now exists 
in most colleges and universities. And the fact 
that the Professors w^ere required by the organization 
of the institution to keep up a sort of espionage on 
students at all hours greatly stimulated the students 
to outwit and annoy the professorial spies by tricks 

[139] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



and escapades which have happily disappeared, for the 
most part, from our principal institutions of higher 
education. I think all who can remember the college 
life of half a century ago will agree that the con- 
ditions were less friendly than the present to the main- 
tenance of pleasant and profitable relations between 
teacher and pupil and to the growth of manli- 
ness and serious purpose in the student. The con- 
trast is often felt at Commencement dinners when 
some venerable graduate has the bad taste to enter- 
tain the company with the stories of his silly college 
pranks, of which any student now would be incapable. 

Dr. Woolsey, in his historical address at Yale 
College in 1850, called attention to the fact that the 
college course as it was given at that time tended to 
repress individual peculiarities and cast all men in 
the same mould more than the course of the previous 
century, in which the students were incited to argue 
and debate on philosophical questions. There can 
be no doubt that the uniformity of the work which all 
the students had to accomplish, whatever the differ- 
ences of mental make among them, tended far more 
than the present system of large elections to prevent 
the development of men along the line of their native 
gifts. 

One result was sometimes attained in the old 
college which is less easily secured in the great 
university of the present day, a result due not to any 
superiority in organization, but to the limited number 
of students then in attendance. It was the powerful 

[ 140] 



COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY 

impression of a great teacher, when a Faculty was so 
fortunate as to have one, on the minds and characters 
of the great mass of students. When EHphalet Nott 
or Mark Hopkins or Francis Wayland had a class 
of only thirty or forty students in daily contact with 
him, the stamp of the teacher was ineffaceably set 
upon almost every student, so that the whole college 
took on the shape and coloring of his mind. No 
one teacher, however gifted and impressive, in our 
great universities, where the students are pursuing 
such a diversity of courses, can wield such a power 
over the whole body of students, though, doubtless, 
a Nott or Hopkins or Wayland, if a member of the 
Faculty of a modern university, would draw to his 
class-room a larger number of pupils than was found 
in Union or Williams or Brown in their day. The 
result of this contact of a master with the whole 
membership of a small college is generally considered 
as an indisputable advantage. But it is perhaps open 
to dispute whether it is better for a whole body of 
students to be thus dominated by the doctrines of 
any one man, however eminent, than to have the 
more catholic discipline which flows from contact 
with excellent teachers of various attainments and 
temperaments. The great scholars of Germany 
habitually follow the practice of going from one uni- 
versity to another, to sit at the feet of more great 
masters than one. And just now the first scholars in 
this country are laying plans to facilitate the migra- 
tion of our graduate students from one university to 

[141] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



another, in order that they may touch the best 
teachers in more than one. 

Wliile the old college was made illustrious by some 
such famous teachers as those I have named, it is to 
be observed that the university of our time demands, 
as a rule, much larger attainments in its Professors 
than were formerly asked. Fifty years ago many 
professorial chairs were filled by men who had not 
made much special study of the branch or branches 
which they were appointed to teach. 1 say branches, 
because in many cases, in scientific teaching gen- 
erally, a man was expected to teach two or three, or 
even more, branches. Not infrequently a preacher 
who had become weary of writing sermons, or whose 
parish had become weary of hearing his sermons, 
was appointed to a chair, because it was hoped he 
could teach respectably, while he could commend 
the college to the public by supplying pulpits of the 
vicinity from time to time. Having this means of 
earning something on Sundays, he could afford to 
accept a moderate salary for his college work. One 
such gentleman applied for a chair in a college with 
whose Faculty I was connected, and when asked what 
chair he thought he was fitted to fill, replied that he 
thought he could slide into almost any one of them. 

But teaching in a college or university of the first 
rank has happily become a profession, for which long 
and careful preparation is now exacted. A man who 
has failed in another calKng can no longer expect 
to "slide" into a professorial chair. True, not 

[ 142] 



COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY 

all the learning which can be acquired in the best 
American and European universities will make a 
successful professor of the man who has not in him 
the divine gift of teaching. But even the possessor 
of this divine gift must bring to his work now a 
generous outfit of learning in his chosen branch. 
And the leading colleges and universities in our 
country may now well be proud of the brilliant 
generation of scholars who fill most of their important 
chairs of instruction. Under the old order of things 
there was no necessity, and little inducement, for 
the teacher of any branch but the ancient classics 
to go far beyond the comparatively elementary stages 
of learning. But the elective system and the gradu- 
ate work in all our universities now demand that 
there shall be learned specialists, who have pushed 
their studies well up to the remotest frontier of knowl- 
edge in their respective fields, and are constantly 
striving to explore beyond that frontier. 

The contrast in the range of the advantages now 
offered in the university and in that of the oppor- 
tunities present in the college of fifty years ago is 
well typified in the contrast between the buildings, 
laboratories, libraries, and other educational appli- 
ances of a good university of to-day and those of a 
college of olden time, or in the contrast between their 
endowments then and now. It would be a moderate 
statement to say that the income-yielding funds of 
our stronger institutions have increased twenty -fold, 
and that the income and expenditures of some of the 

[143] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



most important have increased much more than that. 
In 1850 the total endowment funds of Brown Uni- 
versity amounted to only $34,500. The income 
could not have much exceeded $2000. Last year the 
income of that institution was $129,677. In 1850 
the income of Yale College was $23,000. I suppose 
it must be at least $700,000 now. The salaries of 
professors in 1850 were $800 to $1000, in Yale $1150. 
The income of Harvard is now about $1,200,000. 

A university of the leading type cannot go on with- 
out a plant and endowment of several millions in 
value. This increase in the resources and outlay 
of a university is due in part to the necessity of 
accommodating more students, but also happily to 
the desire to have buildings of becoming architecture, 
to the great costliness of scientific instruction which 
has been so rapidly developed, to the collecting of 
large and valuable libraries, which are so indispen- 
sable to the scholar, and to the enlargement of the 
faculties, consequent not only on the increase in 
students, but to specialization in teaching. The 
conduct of a university has become, from one point 
of view, a great business transaction. On this 
account, as well as by reason of the important 
changes in the organization of the work, the duties 
of the president of such an institution have been 
considerably modified. The qualifications for suc- 
cess in the executive office are different from those 
which were formerly regarded as sufficient. It used 
to be thought that a clergyman of imposing appear- 

[144] 



COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY 

ance, who could make a good impression in the 
pulpits of his denomination, who could teach in- 
tellectual and moral philosophy from text-books 
and show some tact in managing unruly students, 
and who had received the degree of Doctor of 
Divinity, possessed the essential qualities needed for 
a college president. But intelligent trustees of a 
university, who are seeking a president, now look 
for a man with administrative talent, with some 
familiarity with business methods, with a knowl- 
edge of men, with judgment in choosing and tact 
in leading the many teachers now required in a 
great faculty. He is of course expected to have 
scholarly attainments in some branch of learning, 
and to be familiar with the best thought on 
educational problems. But he is not asked to 
teach, and unfortunately in my opinion does not 
generally give any regular instruction. If we may 
judge from the number of important universities 
that are always seeking presidents, the needed com- 
bination of qualities now looked for is not easy to 
find, or the men who possess them wisely prefer to 
follow some other less trying and exacting pursuit 
than that of a university executive. 

Not only has there come a change in the qualifica- 
tions of the teachers and the executive during the 
present generation, but also a marked change in 
the proportion of students who are not intending 
to follow the professions of the ministry, law, and 
medicine. Originally, as is well known, the New 

[ 145] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



England Colleges were chiefly intended to supply 
the churches with a learned ministry. They were 
regarded as also useful for men looking to the practice 
of law or medicine. But rather slowly the conviction 
became general that a liberal training was useful to 
men who were to engage in other pursuits. For- 
tunately the belief has become widespread that it is 
essential to the highest success of a man of any 
calling to have a well-disciplined and thoroughly 
furnished mind and to be moulded into that type of 
manhood which a university life is calculated to 
produce. So it has come to pass that a very large 
proportion of students in our day are not looking 
forward to what used to be called the learned 
professions. But welcoming the opportunities now 
offered in the varied courses of instruction in the 
university for general culture or specific training in 
some one direction, they crowd the halls of learning 
and go forth to beneficent and illuminating lives 
in every worthy pursuit. The result is that the 
blessings of university culture directly and indirectly 
are diffused much more thoroughly then formerly 
throughout all parts of the body politic. 

No other change in the constitution of the student 
body has been so striking as that caused by the 
opening of colleges and universities to women. 
Fifty years ago there was no school of really collegiate 
rank to which a woman could gain admission. 
Now women can, in this country, have access to the 
same opportunities for collegiate and university 

[146] 



COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY 

training as men. Of the many beneficent and far- 
reaching consequences of this change in educational 
administration I cannot now speak. But I cannot 
refrain from saying that no other single cause has 
done and is doing more to elevate the work of our 
secondary schools. By far the larger number of 
teachers in high schools, especially in the West, 
are women. Formerly most of them were unable 
to secure the needed training for their work. Even 
if here and there a woman, by her exceptional talent 
and energy, had succeeded in the face of all obstacles 
in obtaining that training, she was weakened and 
embarrassed in her work by the fear that she was 
not as well prepared as the men who competed with 
her. But now she not only has the very same train- 
ing as they, but she knows that she has it, and 
conducts her classes with a confidence which adds 
immensely to her power as a teacher. The remark- 
able improvement which has been made in the high 
schools of the West has been largely due to the ampler 
learning and the confident power which women now 
carry from our universities to the schools. 

A feature of considerable importance in the new 
life of college and university is the training in 
gymnastics and the prominence of athletic games. 
Baseball and football were favorite college games 
long ago. But the costly and commodious modern 
gymnasium was not found half a century ago on any 
college grounds. Intercollegiate contests were un- 
known. The newspapers blazoned forth the achieve- 

[147] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



ments on the field of no college hero. The athletic 
rivalries were confined to classes in a college. Now 
the gymnasium is one of the most spacious and 
costly edifices in many universities. The teacher 
of gymnastics is a member of the faculty. The 
athletic contests receive the careful attention and 
are under the control of a committee of professors. 
If one were to judge by the space given to inter- 
collegiate contests in all the newspapers, one would 
conclude that the main purpose of a modern college 
or university is to row or to play baseball or football, 
and that study is merely an incident, a diversion, a 
by-play. 

That the systematic and wisely conducted exercises 
of the gymnasium and the spirited games in the 
athletic field, when played in an unprofessional 
spirit, are conducive to health, self-control, and 
manliness, cannot be doubted. I believe that by 
our attention to physical training we are rearing a 
stronger and more vigorous generation of students, 
both men and women, in our higher institutions 
than the preceding generation. That we have yet 
something to learn by experience of the proper rela- 
tions of athletics to university life and of the wisest 
use of them will probably be conceded by all. 

One of the most striking and encouraging facts in 
the growth of the new university is the rapid develop- 
ment of the graduate school. Yale College estab- 
lished such a department in 1847. In the catalogue 
of 1849-50 the names of twenty graduate students 

[ 148 1 



COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY 

appear, in the Harvard catalogue for the same year 
the names of four. For the most part, in those days 
those who wished to carry their literary or scientific 
studies beyond the old curriculum were obliged to 
go to the European universities. But now every 
important university has a well-organized graduate 
department, with a considerable company of zealous 
students who are pushing their work far beyond 
the frontier of the undergraduate department. The 
number of such students now in attendance is esti- 
mated at more than five thousand. These graduate 
schools are the nurseries of the great body of most 
accomplished teachers for our high schools, academies, 
colleges, and universities. In these are some learned, 
conscientious, and inspiring professors who impart 
as good instruction as can be obtained in any Euro- 
pean university. The fact that most of them are 
handicapped by the necessity of giving instruction 
to undergraduates, of course, seriously interferes 
with the attainment of the best results. But the 
lifting power of the presence in the university of a 
considerable number of mature graduates, working 
in their free and earnest manner, is felt by the whole 
body of undergraduates. But if w^e are to do the 
work to which we aspire through our graduate schools 
we shall have to create a faculty of learned teachers 
who can give their entire energies to the instruction of 
graduates by the methods especially suited to them. 
Perhaps in no particular is the contrast between 
the old college and the new university more marked 

[149] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



than in the close relation of the university, and 
especially the university in the West, to the public 
and to the schools. It is not easy for us now to 
realize to how great an extent the college of fifty 
years ago was isolated from the public. By the 
great mass of common people it was regarded as 
the home of useless and harmless recluses, of the 
mysteries of whose life they knew nothing and for 
whose pursuits they cared nothing. The college 
oflScers took little pains to make themselves or their 
work known to the masses. They did not particu- 
larly concern themselves about cultivating intimate 
relations with the schools. They lived in a sort of 
dignified seclusion. Their influence was, therefore, 
not directly felt to any great extent in the educational 
systems of the states. Nor did they take much 
pains to adjust their work to that of the schools. 

But we all know how conspicuous most of the uni- 
versities have been in recent years in all educational 
discussions and in reforms of the primary and 
secondary schools, as well as of collegiate work. 
They have abandoned their monastic seclusion. 
They have sought to make their aims and their life 
known to all the public and to interest all classes 
of men in their welfare. They have endeavored 
to shape their work so as to be of use to society at 
large and have spared no effort to convince society 
that their supreme desire is to be of service to all 
classes and to all mankind. They have cultivated 
the most intimate relations with the secondary 

[150] 



COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY 

schools and have adjusted their courses to meet and 
supplement those of the schools. Especially in the 
West, though there is no organic and compulsory 
unity in the educational system of any state, the 
universities have by wise adaptation to circum- 
stances secured a practical unity between themselves 
and the secondary schools almost as complete as 
that between the secondary schools and the lower 
schools. More than that, many of the professors 
in the universities have joined in every effort to 
complete and elevate the public school systems of 
the states, so that, to a degree never known before, 
there is a feeling of sympathy and community of 
interest between the teachers of all grades of school 
from the kindergarten up to the graduate school of 
the university. I think we may, without boastful- 
ness, claim that the universities of the West have 
been conspicuous in this useful work. Perhaps 
nothing that they have done will be seen ultimately 
to have been of more permanent value to the nation. 
It is gratifying to see that this new movement on 
the part of the universities has met with a most 
hearty response from the public. The amount of 
money which has been poured into the treasuries of 
our universities during the last few years astonishes 
even the Europeans with their richly endowed 
institutions. I have heard it estimated by a careful 
scholar that since 1869 Harvard University has 
received in gifts a sum equal to fifty dollars for each 
day of these thirty years. The civic pride of this 

[151] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



city, than which there is no stronger or more enthu- 
siastic in any city of the world, has reared these 
palaces of learning and enabled this University in 
less than a decade to reach a development for which 
Harvard had to wait two centuries and a half. The 
Legislature of this state, representing a constituency 
mainly of farmers, to whom the earning of a dollar 
means much toil and sweat, so appreciates its State 
University that it cheerfully voted this spring to 
raise by taxation about $700,000 in aid of it. The 
State of Nebraska, which only a few years ago was 
asking charity for its destitute farmers, whose crops 
drought and grasshoppers had destroyed, has just 
voted a tax of a mill on a dollar for the support of 
its University. Wisconsin has for years been raising 
by taxation $200,000 or more a year, and Michigan 
has just voted, with only four dissenting voices in 
its legislature, a tax yielding about $275,000 a year 
for the University's support. Public and private 
generosity thus rival each other in the hearty support 
of the universities which have had the wisdom to 
dedicate themselves with all their resources to the 
public service. 

Is there any more auspicious sign for the future of 
our country than the readiness of our people to pour 
out their money like water for the support of their 
institutions of learning, and the eager desire of our 
scholars and teachers to perfect our educational 
systems .f^ Our universities have by no means reached 
their ideal development. All of us who are con- 

[152] 



COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY 

cerned in the administration of them see room for 
many improvements. But when we see what fifty 
years have accomplished in the evolution of the new 
university from the old and stereotyped college, we 
take courage and press on. Still larger resources 
must be made available for continuing the progress 
which has been begun. But we are confident that 
the American people, who, whatever their short- 
comings, have a passion for education, will not stay 
their hands until some of our universities have 
attained an excellence which shall draw to them 
eager scholars from all parts of the civilized world. 
It needs no prophet's eye to see and no flatterer's 
tongue to tell that in that proud day this shall be 
one of the shrines to which the feet of the eager 
pilgrim scholars will turn, and here reverent and 
grateful mention will be made of the brilliant, gener- 
ous, and devoted men who laid the foundations of 
this great University. 



[153 



VI 



A MEMORIAL DISCOURSE 

ON THE LIFE AND SERVICES OF HENRY SIMMONS 

FRIEZE, LL.D., PROFESSOR OF THE LATIN 

LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE IN THE 

UNIVERSITY FROM 1854 TO 1889 



MARCH 16, 1890 

DELIVERED IN UNIVERSITY HALL BY REQUEST 
OF THE SENATE 



VI 
HENRY SIMMONS FRIEZE 



We have gathered here to-day with that deep 
sense of loss which has weighed so heavily upon us 
for the past few weeks. Daily as we enter these 
grounds or pass through these halls, we miss the 
elastic step, the radiant face, the genial word of him 
who for more than a generation, as the inspiring 
teacher, the helpful colleague, the charming friend, 
has left a benediction on every life he has touched. 
For five and thirty years he has formed so large a 
part of the University that we who are left behind 
feel in our sorrow and privation as though a portion 
of the very life of the University had been cleft 
away. His loving and lovable nature drew those 
of us who had known him longest and best so close 
to him that it often seems to us as though in his 
death something was riven from the inmost being of 
each of us. 

We have felt that we could not deny ourselves the 
sad pleasure of coming up to this place, where we 
have listened in days gone by to his words of in- 
struction and cheer, to recall the chief events of his 
life and the traits of his character, and to express 
our appreciation of the man and of his great services 
to the University. In accepting your invitation to 
speak in your behalf on this occasion, I am painfully 

[157] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



aware how inadequate an idea any picture I can 
draw can give to a stranger of the combination of 
beauty and of power which was found in his deHcate 
and noble soul. But I am sure that the memories 
of his old friends will fill the outline which I may 
sketch with a more lifelike portrait than pen or 
pencil or chisel can produce. 

Henry Simmons Frieze was born in Boston, Mass., 
September 15, 1817, where his father, Jacob Frieze, 
resided for a brief period. His great-grandfather 
was German by birth. His father, who was a native, 
and for most of his life a resident, of Providence, R.I., 
was a man of marked intellectual vigor. The years 
of the early manhood of Jacob Frieze were given to 
teaching. Then he entered the ministry of the 
Universalist denomination and preached until an 
affection of the throat compelled him to desist. 
He was settled over parishes in Milford and Marlboro, 
Mass., and Pawtucket, R.I. Later he was engaged 
in editorial work on newspapers in Providence 
and distinguished himself in the production of 
political pamphlets, an agency which fifty years ago 
was largely employed in political campaigns in 
Rhode Island, as it had formerly been in England. 
He wielded a sharp and caustic pen and was a 
formidable antagonist in debate. He played a 
considerable part within my recollection in the 
public affairs of Rhode Island. From him the son 
inherited his intellectual activity, and also his cour- 
age, in which, with all his gentleness of manner, he 

[158] 



HENRY SIMMONS FRIEZE 



was by no means wanting. From him too he in- 
herited his musical gifts. But from his mother, 
Betsey Slade, of Somerset, Mass., a woman of 
devout, sweet, and retiring nature, he received that 
deHcacy and gentleness and modesty which were so 
characteristic of him. The influences in the home 
were both stimulating and refining. 

But circumstances required the boy to become at 
an early age a bread-winner. \Miile yet a lad he 
was placed as a clerk with an excellent Christian 
man in Providence, for whom he ever retained a 
strong affection. His taste and talent for music 
made him somewhat conspicuous as a musician 
while he was still young. Finding a remunerative 
position at Newport as organist and teacher of 
music, he removed thither. By the urgent advice 
of some of his cultivated friends in that city, who 
recognized his talent and his promise, he formed 
the purpose, though not until he was nearly nineteen 
years of age, of gaining a college education. While 
supporting himself by the exercise of his musical 
gifts he hastily and imperfectly prepared himself 
for college in the school of Joseph Joslin. During 
his residence at Newport he was confirmed as a 
communicant in the Protestant Episcopal Church, 
to whose interests he was in the most catholic spirit 
devoted through his whole life. 

In September, 1837, when he was just entering 
on his twenty-first year, he was admitted to the 
Freshman class in Brown University. He was one 

[159] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



of the oldest students in the class. He used to say 
that the recollection of the amiable leniency of his 
examiners, to which he thought he owed his admission, 
always inclined him to be charitable in judging 
the applicants who in all these years came to him 
to be examined in Latin for entrance to this Uni- 
versity. Though he was at first somewhat embar- 
rassed in his college work by his lack of thorough 
instruction in school — since from the age of twelve 
or thirteen to the age of nineteen he had been 
constantly engaged in earning his livelihood — his 
talent and industry soon placed him at the head of 
his class, the position which he held at graduation. 
His work was excellent in all departments, but 
especially in the languages. He had less aptitude 
for mathematics than for other branches, but by 
dint of his diligence he succeeded well even in his 
mathematical studies. One of his classmates, Rev. 
Dr. Kendall Brooks, writes me, "He had great 
dignity, not only of manner, but of spirit also, and 
while he was not intimate with many students, he 
was profoundly respected by every one." He was 
organist and chorister of St. John's church, and 
Superintendent of the Sunday school during his 
entire college course. He was enabled by his ser- 
vices as organist and as a teacher of music to pay 
his college expenses and to assist needy relatives. 
It is clear that he must have been very industrious 
to maintain his high college rank and to perform 
so much outside labor. Moreover, during a part of 

[160] 



HENRY SIMMONS FRIEZE 



his Junior year, owing to some disease of his eyes, 
he was unable to use them in study. Many of his 
lessons he learned by having them read. Having 
received the highest honor at the Junior exhibition, 
the Latin oration, he was unable to touch pen to 
paper in the preparation of it, but dictated the whole 
of it. In all his college days he was conspicuously 
active and faithful in the exercise of a positive 
Christian influence. During his Senior year there 
came upon him the gravest of sorrows in the sudden 
death of one who was dearer to him than his own life. 
He bowed with Christian submission to the heavy 
affliction, but the chastening memory of it long left 
its impress upon him. The accounts that we get 
of his undergraduate career give us the picture of a 
gifted, earnest, devout, hard-working and successful 
student, who was learning not only what the college, 
whose standards were high and exacting, could teach, 
but also the self-reliance and discipline which 
dependence on his own toil for support and sore 
providential trials brought him in large measure. 

Immediately on his graduation he was appointed 
tutor in Brown University, and held that position 
for three years. His duties consisted mainly in the 
teaching of Latin. Rev. Dr. Fisher, of the Yale 
Theological Seminary, who was one of his pupils at 
that time, writes thus of his recollections of the young 
tutor's instruction. 

"His scholarship appeared to me to be faultless. 
Nothing in the author whom we studied escaped his 

[161] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



attention. It was impossible for any one of us to 
prepare perfectly for a recitation. There would be 
questions, fair questions too, which we had not 
foreseen. His ideal of accuracy it was in vain for 
us to attempt to reach. He always followed the 
translation made by a student with a translation of 
his own, and this was uniformly, if not more correct, 
more tasteful and finished than any of us by the 
utmost painstaking could present. Mr. Frieze was 
a gentleman and had a certain refinement and 
reserve which kept off undue familiarity. I think 
of him, as I always have thought, as a teacher of 
rare qualifications. I owe him a debt which it has 
ever given me much pleasure to acknowledge.'* 

In 1844 Mr. Frieze became associated with a 
classmate in the conduct of the University Grammar 
School in Providence, and continued in that work 
for the next ten years. 

In 1847 a happy marriage gave him the delights 
of a home, which with his affectionate nature he 
was so fitted to enjoy and to gladden.^ Though 
our hearts run out with tenderest sympathy to his 
stricken wife and daughters, we may not invade 
the sanctity of their fresh grief even to describe 
the sweet and beautiful spirit of domestic love, 
which has lent such a charm to the quiet life of their 
home. 

The University Grammar School was composed 
largely of pupils who were preparing to enter Brown 

* August 16, 1847, he married Miss Anna B. Roffee, of Providence. 
[ 162 1 



HENRY SIMMONS FRIEZE 



University. It soon acquired a most enviable 
reputation. It was my good fortune to enter that 
school in the late autumn of 1844 and to enjoy the 
instruction of Mr. Frieze in Greek and Latin until 
the following July. No event of my life ever gave 
me a stronger intellectual stimulus than the contact 
with that inspiring young teacher during those few 
months. My heart was at once bound to him with 
an affection which has grown stronger and stronger 
through these five and forty years. Such teaching 
as his was a revelation to me. How contagious was 
his literary enthusiasm! So brilliant, so stirring, 
so inspiring was all his instruction that the class 
seemed to be surcharged with his wonderful nervous 
activity. When in reciting the lesson we had 
exhausted our slender stock of knowledge, which 
after diligent study we had supposed w^th some 
complacency to be of considerable value, how were 
we often startled by a whole volley of questions, 
partly revealing what was new to us, and still more 
stimulating us to search before the next day for what 
was not revealed. When the exercise was closed, 
the blood was in our faces and our hearts were beat- 
ing fast as though we had come from a contest 
on the ball ground. How vividly I recall him in the 
beauty of early manhood, as, with his dark, rich, 
curly locks falling on his neck, his eyes gleaming 
through his spectacles, he conducted his classes. 
He paced almost constantly up and down the plat- 
form. Now and then he halted suddenly to pierce 

[163] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



some stupid blunder with a sharp question as with 
a winged arrow, or again when we made a happy 
rendering of some fine passage in Vergil his face 
beamed with a radiance which was our suflficient 
reward. His mien and bearing seemed to impart 
to the class and to the whole school the spirit of his 
overflowing vitality and scholarly enthusiasm. He 
seemed to me the ideal teacher. 

It is not strange that when in 1854 a vacancy 
occurred in the chair of Latin in this University, 
Professor Boise, who had been familiar with Mr. 
Frieze's career as a student and a teacher, should 
have directed the attention of the University au- 
thorities to his friend. Mr. Frieze was at once 
appointed to the position, which he held until the 
day of his death. It was a rare fortune which 
brought to the University in its early days two such 
classical teachers as Professors Boise and Frieze. 
They so impressed themselves upon the Institution 
in its plastic and formative days, they so com- 
mended the value of the studies committed to their 
care, they invested what were often contemptuously 
and ignorantly called "the dead languages" with 
such a charm, they so illustrated in their own minds 
the cultivating and refining power of the ancient 
literatures that from the very beginning of their 
labors an enthusiastic love for classical culture was 
nurtured in this University, and it has continued 
to this day. 

After discharging the duties of his new chair for a 
[ 164] 



HENRY SIMMONS FRIEZE 



year, Professor Frieze obtained leave of absence in 
order to gratify a long cherished desire of visiting 
Europe for the purposes of observation and study. 
His mind, so keenly appreciative of all the beauties 
of art and of nature, and so thoroughly trained and 
disciplined, reaped the most abundant fruits from 
the visit abroad. He attended lectures at the 
University of Berlin, afterwards visited Italy, and 
returned homeward through France and England. 
Before he started. President Tappan had imparted 
to him something of his enthusiastic admiration 
for German scholarship and German methods of 
education. What he saw with his own eyes more 
than confirmed his previous impressions of the great 
excellence of the German gymnasial and university 
training, and after his return he never ceased to 
commend the application of German methods, so 
far as practicable, to the work of our high schools 
and universities. One can imagine rather than 
describe what delights and inspirations a European 
journey furnished to a soul with such a passion as 
his for music as well as for the beauties of painting 
and sculpture and architecture. President White, 
who was one of his travelling companions in Germany 
and Italy, writes to me with a delighted recollection 
of Mr. Frieze's animated and instructive conver- 
sation on questions of Roman life and character, 
and especially on music, and says, "I have always 
believed that had he been born in Germany he would 
have ranked with great composers and performers." 

[165] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



He tells a pleasing story of their travelling on a train 
from Dresden to Prague with some Bohemian sol- 
diers, who were singing plaintive songs, and Mr. 
Frieze jotted down the notes as they sang, and 
reproduced the songs afterwards. Nothing that was 
worth seeing or hearing, we may be sure, escaped his 
alert and active mind. We who are so familiar 
with the extraordinary skill which he attained as an 
organist and a pianist, and with some of his musical 
compositions, cannot deem President White's esti- 
mate of his musical ability at all extravagant. 

At his suggestion the Regents placed a sum of 
money at his disposal for the purchase in Europe 
of casts, statuettes, and photographs illustrative of 
archaeology and ancient art. Thus was laid the 
foundation of our Museum of Art, for whose subse- 
quent development he worked so assiduously during 
the years that followed. Its growth has been due 
more to his labors than to those of any other person. 
It was largely through his influence that the eminent 
sculptor, Randolph Rogers, decided to give us the 
casts of his works, and that other valuable works 
of art have been presented to the University. 

He brought back from Europe higher ideals of 
his own work and much broader conceptions of the 
function of this University. He used in conversation 
to reproach himself that when in 1851 Dr. Wayland 
unfolded his large views of what our American 
colleges and universities should attempt, he had 
not acquired breadth enough to sympathize with the 

[166] 



HENRY SIMMONS FRIEZE 



ideas of that great teacher. But after coming here 
he was awakened by President Tappan's vigorous 
expositions of educational doctrines, which were 
quite in harmony with those of Dr. Wayland, to a 
clear perception of their worth. After his observa- 
tion of European universities he was ever an enthu- 
siastic supporter of the plans on which fortunately 
for us our first President shaped the life of this Uni- 
versity during the eleven years of his administration. 
The spolia opima which he brought from his 
literary, aesthetic, and archaeological studies abroad 
added a new charm to his teaching. In his presence, 
in his class-room, even the raw and untrained student 
felt at once the subtle influence of the spirit of culture 
which emanated from the instructor. The fineness 
of literary perception, the delicacy of taste, which 
revealed themselves through all his interpretation 
of the ancient masters of thought, polished and ele- 
vated while they instructed the class. His exalted 
ethical nature led him also to impress upon his 
pupils without cant or platitudes, but in the most 
natural and effective manner, the moral, the heroic 
qualities of the ancient characters of whom they 
were reading. He made these characters living, 
real persons, who had their messages for our times 
and for us. The old literature was made vital with 
a fresh and throbbing life, that poured its currents 
into the lives of the youthful students of our day. 
Withal there was in him the inexpressible charm of 
the finest breeding, which wielded a power mightier 

[167] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



than that of official authority even over the rudest 
and most uncultivated student. How many a 
graduate have we heard say that two impressions 
above all they brought from Professor Frieze's 
class-room; namely, that he was the perfect gentle- 
man, and that he had the finest culture. Who can 
measure the refining influence of such a mind and 
character on the hundreds of men and women who 
have passed under his hands? 

He not only won the admiration of his pupils as 
the accomplished scholar and gentleman, but he 
also won their affection as their most faithful friend. 
His sympathy was so quick and expressive that 
they were drawn to him with a strong attachment. 
In his later years this love of his students for him 
was mingled with a sort of tender and filial reverence, 
which it was very charming to behold. It would 
have been simply impossible for any one of them de- 
signedly to do anything which would have caused him 
the least annoyance or to withhold any service which 
would afford him gratification. This affectionate 
devotion of his pupils was to him, as it is to every 
teacher, the most gratifying reward of all his labors. 

On the resignation of President Haven, in 1869, he 
was appointed Acting President of the University. 
His characteristic modesty led him to hesitate about 
accepting the position, but he finally yielded to the 
persuasion of the Board of Regents. The two years 
during which he was the chief executive were marked 
by important events in the history of the Institution. 

[168] 



HENRY SIMMONS FRIEZE 



In 1870 women were admitted to all Departments 
of the University. This step was taken by the 
Regents rather in deference to public opinion than 
to the wishes of the Faculties. I think that Professor 
Frieze, like most of his colleagues, assented to the 
action of the Regents rather than urged it. To 
tell the truth, there were many misgivings here on 
the ground concerning the experiment of admitting 
women to these halls. But Mr. Frieze and his 
colleagues generally soon became convinced that the 
action of the Board was wise and he did all in his 
power to make the experiment successful. I never 
heard him speak of the presence of women in the 
University except with the greatest satisfaction. 
Another important step was due altogether to the 
suggestion of the Acting President. That was the 
establishment of the so-called diploma relation with 
the preparatory schools. The plan which he pro- 
posed and which was adopted in 1871 was an adapta- 
tion to our circumstances of the German method 
of receiving students into the universities from the 
gymnasiums. No measure has been adopted by 
the University authorities in many years which has 
been more beneficial to both the University and the 
schools, and none which has been more widely or 
profitably imitated by other universities. 

It was owing to the prompt action of Dr. Frieze 
and the generosity of his friend, Philo Parsons, 
that the library of Professor Rau, of Heidelberg, 
was secured for us. It was at the instance of the 

[169] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



Acting President that the age for admission to the 
Literary Department was raised from fourteen to 
sixteen years, that music was introduced into the 
chapel service, that the custom of furnishing a dinner 
to the alumni and friends of the University on 
Commencement Day was introduced, and that with 
the hope of creating a common interest between 
the several Departments an attempt was made, 
though afterwards abandoned, to observe a Uni- 
versity Day by public exercises. It was during his 
term of office that the Legislature voted the sum of 
seventy-five thousand dollars for the erection of the 
main building between the two wings of University 
Hall, and so established the happy precedent which 
every subsequent Legislature has followed in furnish- 
ing liberal means for the erection of needed buildings 
for the University. The power of Dr. Frieze's 
active and fertile mind was felt in every Department 
of the Institution. He was afterwards twice called 
to the position of Acting President during the absence 
of the President, once serving from June, 1880, to 
February, 1882, and again from October, 1887, to 
January, 1888. The heavy wear and tear of ad- 
ministrative labors from 1869 to 1871, rendered 
perhaps more difficult by the fact that he was known 
to be discharging them only temporarily, made a 
serious draught upon his not very robust constitu- 
tion. No sooner was an incumbent of the Presidency, 
whom he with the partiality of early friendship had 
commended, chosen by the Regents than he sought 

[170] 



HENRY SIMMONS FRIEZE 



and obtained leave of absence in order to visit 
Europe again. He and his family remained abroad 
two years. He spent his first winter at Tubingen, 
diligently studying Sanscrit under that great scholar, 
Professor Roth, attending lectures at his pleasure 
in the University of Tubingen, and mingling freely 
in society with the professors. He afterwards 
spent a long time at the charming spot, which Presi- 
dent Tappan subsequently chose as his home, Vevey. 
He travelled through Switzerland, went again to the 
chief Italian cities, remained for several weeks at 
Munich, and visited among other places Paris, 
Dusseldorf, Berlin, and Oxford. His object in this 
tour was not so much to devote himself to study 
as to seek tranquil enjoyment and recuperation in 
the midst of beautiful scenery and those sesthetic 
delights which fine music and the galleries of art 
afforded him. He came home in the summer of 
1873, refreshed and invigorated, and ready to resume 
with zest the duties of his chair. 

After his return his ideal of the proper work of his 
department and of the University was even broader 
and richer than before. He gave instruction to 
advanced classes chiefly in the works of Tacitus, of 
Seneca, and of Pliny the Younger. He lectured and 
commented on these authors in a very free, large, 
and suggestive manner. He discoursed with equal 
fervor on the pregnant, compact, sententious style 
of Tacitus, on the lofty ethics of the stoic philosophy 
as interpreted by Seneca, and on the high breeding 

[171] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



and varied culture of that fine Roman gentleman, 
the proconsul of Pontus and Bithynia. He has also 
lectured for many years past on the history of ancient 
art. He found opportunity to set forth in his 
lectures the functions of the several fine arts, to 
expound the canons of art criticism, to direct his 
pupils to the illustrations of art to be found in our 
Library and our Museum of Art, and to give them 
the results of his careful and appreciative studies 
in the museums of Europe. 

In his teaching of Latin authors, though he always 
insisted on that accurate grammatical knowledge, 
without which one cannot be said to know a language, 
and though he did not in the least undervalue the 
importance of exhaustive philological training for 
some students, he was always inclined, as has been 
intimated, to concentrate the attention of his pupils 
chiefly on the literary and ethical lessons to be 
drawn from the Latin writers. These lessons, he 
believed, were what all except the few who were to 
be technical philologists most needed. More and 
more in his later years he was disposed to emphasize 
this idea. He insisted that Latin should be so taught 
as to form a solid foundation for the literary culture 
of college students, and that the importance of so 
teaching it was rapidly increasing from the fact 
that, especially in the West, large numbers read 
Latin, who read no Greek. He was ever urging 
pupils to take Greek with the Latin. He regretted 
the tendency among classical teachers to confine 

[ 172 ] 



HENRY SIMMONS FRIEZE 



themselves to one of these two ancient languages. 
He thought that by excessive specializing in their 
work they incurred the danger of becoming narrow, 
and that it would be better if, as in German uni- 
versities, our classical professors gave some instruc- 
tion in both literatures. But upon no point was he 
accustomed to dwell in these later years with so 
much fervor as upon the transcendent importance 
of teaching Latin literature not merely as a collection 
of works of gifted men, but as the expression of the 
life of the great Roman nation, uttering itself in 
history, philosophy, and poetry. Upon the exposi- 
tion of it he would turn all the illumination to be 
furnished by Roman archaeology and Roman art. 
According to his conception it was not Latin that 
we should study so much as Roman, the achieve- 
ments, the spirit, the vital power of the Roman race. 
Nor should we teach and study the literature of 
Rome, with whatever enthusiasm and admiration, 
merely as a beautiful creation of a dead past, but 
rather as the flowering of an imperishable life, whose 
vital currents have been flowing through all the 
Western civilization of these eighteen centuries, and 
are still beating in the pulses of this nineteenth 
century. It was the Rome which has persisted 
with a power that no Goth or Vandal could over- 
come, the Rome which helps shape and fertilize 
our art, our laws, our literatures to-day, the Rome 
which bids fair to endure when every vestige of her 
proudest material structures shall have crumbled 

f 173 1 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



into dust — it was that great, that glorious, that 
immortal Rome, which he sought to recreate for his 
loving pupils. 

Dr. Frieze discharged the debt which every man is 
said to owe to his profession by preparing editions 
of the complete works of Vergil and of the tenth and 
twelfth books of Quintilian. These made his name 
familiar to students throughout the land. His 
accurate scholarship and his fine literary spirit here 
as elsewhere characterized his work and commended 
it to the approbation of our best classical scholars. 
His edition of Quintilian was the first prepared to 
meet the wants of American students. He had a 
marked fondness for Vergil. I have sometimes 
thought — perhaps it is only a fancy — that he was 
drawn to the old Latin poet by a certain resemblance 
between their characters. All the traditions depict 
the bard of Mantua as endowed not only with a 
graceful and beautiful mind, but also with a sweet, 
gentle, modest, affectionate nature, that bound 
friends to him by the strongest ties. I am sure 
there are some of us here who, in the sense of our 
great personal loss, have found springing to our lips 
those words of Horace concerning his friend, animae 
dimidium meae. We should certainly place him 
in the group of friends to whom we should apply 
those other words in which Horace speaks of Vergil, 
Plotius, and Varius: 

"Animae, quales neque candidiores 
■^ Terra tulit, neque quis me sit devinctior alter." 

[174] 



HENRY SIMMONS FRIEZE 



Dr. Frieze wrote three years ago a charming little 
volume which was published in London on Giovanni 
Dupre, the eminent Italian sculptor. It set forth 
in flowing and simple style the story of Dupre*s art 
life and revealed the author in every page as the 
sympathetic and appreciative lover of whatever is 
pure and true in sculpture. It contained also the 
translation of two lectures on Art from the pen of 
Dupre's friend, Augusto Conti, Professor of Philos- 
ophy in the University of Florence and President 
of the Academy Delia Crusca. The book has been 
received with much favor by lovers of art both in 
England and in this country. The preparation and 
publication of it led to a correspondence between the 
writer and Professor Conti, which was very gratify- 
ing to our friend. 

Two of Dr. Frieze's addresses may be here men- 
tioned as especially worthy of notice. One was his 
discourse on Dr. Tappan, dehvered in 1882, and the 
other was his discourse on the Relations of the State 
University to Religion, given at our semi-centennial 
celebration in 1887. The former furnishes the best 
portraiture ever made of the first President of the 
University; the latter the ablest discussion ever 
bestowed on the subject it handles. Both give us 
fine illustrations of the author's broad conception 
of the function of a State University and of his 
incisive, vigorous, and effective style of writing. 

Among minor productions of his pen may be named 
a paper on Art Museums in connection with Libraries, 

[175] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



furnished for the Report of the United States Com- 
missioner of Education for 1876, the descriptive 
Catalogue of our Art Museum, which shows the 
marks of much research, and felicitous articles in 
the University journals on deceased professors. 
The last article from his hand, written only a few 
days before his death at my urgent request, was a 
most interesting one, suggested by the presentation 
to our gallery of the statue of General Cass, and 
published in the Detroit Free Press. 

It was always a matter of regret to his friends 
that one who wrote so well was so reluctant to write 
for publication, and even yet more reluctant to 
speak in public. His modesty led him to underrate 
the value of his work, and he was extremely averse 
to what he called the drudgery of committing his 
thoughts to paper. Nothing but a high sense of 
duty could overcome his almost insuperable reluc- 
tance, due in large part to his diffidence, to give a 
public address. 

While conducting his own department with the 
highest aims, Dr. Frieze was ever seeking the im- 
provement and development of the whole University. 
He was continually urging the lifting of the Institu- 
tion out of the narrow ruts of a small local college, 
and giving it the scope and elevation and power of 
a national University. He never came so near the 
manifestation of impatience verging on anger as 
when some policy was proposed which, he thought, 
would bind us down to methods that we ought long 

[176 1 



HENRY SIMMONS FRIEZE 



ago to have outgrown and abandoned. His vision 
was ever stretching out to a broad horizon for us. 
He took a most active part in the important changes 
which were made in the Literary Department 
between 1875 and 1880. He was an earnest advocate 
of the plan adopted in 1874 of conferring Master's 
degrees only on examination, and also of the rule 
allowing candidates for Bachelor's degrees to con- 
centrate their work in the latter part of their course 
on some three branches of study. He favored 
warmly the introduction of the elective system into 
the courses of study under the limitations which 
are now in force. He was chiefly instrumental in 
persuading the Regents to appoint a Professor of 
Music who should give instruction in the history 
and theory of music, and in inducing the citizens 
of Ann Arbor to establish a school for vocal and 
instrumental practice. Indeed, during all the 
years of his residence here he was ever active in 
stimulating both in the city and in the University 
the study of music. 

He was a stanch advocate of the policy of pre- 
serving the unity and integrity of the University 
by retaining all its Departments here. Whenever 
the proposal was made, as it was repeatedly made 
during his term of service, to transfer a part of our 
work elsewhere, he most earnestly opposed it. 
He believed profoundly that in the concentration 
of all our forces here lay our hope of giving the 
greatest eflSciency to each Department and to the 

[177] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



University as a whole. He always had an un- 
bounded faith in the future of this Institution. In 
days of trial, of disappointments, of unjust criticism 
of the University, when others were discouraged and 
despondent, although such misfortune caused his 
sensitive nature keen suffering, he was always full 
of hope that the clouds would soon give way to sun- 
shine. He was sure that the University had gained 
such headway that no obstacles could much impede 
its progress. He believed that it was so deeply 
intrenched in the affection of the citizens of Michigan 
that they would not suffer it to be seriously embar- 
rassed. Hov7 often have I heard him in years past 
say that there was no reason why we should not have 
two thousand students, and express his strong desire 
to live to see such an attendance. He was spared 
to see that desire gratified, and repeatedly during 
the early weeks of this University year he dwelt 
with delight upon the fulfilment of his prediction 
and the granting of his wish. Not that he ever 
confounded bigness with greatness, or desired the 
reputation of the University to rest upon the number 
of its students rather than upon the excellence of 
its work. He was ever devising means to improve 
our facilities for teaching and for elevating the 
character of our instruction. But he felt that with 
the advantages we could offer we deserved to have 
a large attendance, and that such a proof of success 
as the presence of large classes affords was a source 
of strength to the University. 

[178] 



HENRY SIMMONS FRIEZE 



His mind was extremely fertile in suggestions for 
developing the growth and increasing the usefulness 
of this Institution. He had observed keenly and 
studied carefully the colleges and universities of 
this country and of other countries, and had reflected 
much on the causes of their failures and successes. 
He was very apt in drawing lessons from their history. 
He seemed to be ever busy in seeking to apply those 
lessons to our conditions. In all these eighteen years 
of my intimate companionship with him here, in our 
long daily walks together, the burden of his conversa- 
tion was that topic. To build up this University, that 
was "his meat and his drink," the dominant thought 
of his life, which seemed never to be absent from his 
mind. No one of the many faithful teachers under 
this roof ever gave himself with more supreme devo- 
tion, body and soul, to the interests of this school 
of learning. And no man since the days of that 
great leader, who gave to the University in so large 
degree its present form and spirit. Dr. Tappan, has 
furnished so many of the ideas which have shaped 
and enriched its life as Dr. Frieze. Into its life his 
very mind and heart have been builded. 

Because his knowledge of university problems 
was so large, and his judgment was regarded by his 
colleagues as so sound, he has always exerted a 
strong influence over the Literary Faculty and over 
the whole University Senate, and has inspired them 
with his own hopefulness concerning the future of 
the Institution and with his own broad views of 

[179] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



university education. It need hardly be said that 
with his generous conception of a university he 
cherished ideals which have not yet been realized. 
He looked forward with fervent desire and with 
strong hope to the establishment of a school of art 
as a part of our organization. With the collections 
of statuary which we have and of pictures which are 
to come to us, properly housed in a fitting structure 
specially prepared for them, he believed that we 
might well set up such a school. He also longed 
for the day when we might relegate to the preparatory 
schools or to colleges the work now done in the first 
year, and perhaps also that of the second year of 
the literary course, and organize a three years' course 
on the model of the German universities. If that 
plan should remain impracticable, as for the present 
it is, he favored the conferring of the Bachelor's 
degree at the end of three years of undergraduate 
work, so that students might also complete their 
professional studies before they were too far advanced 
in years. He advocated this plan in his Report as 
Acting President in 1881 in one of the ablest papers 
ever published on that subject. This brief rehearsal 
of some of his ideas on university policy may indicate 
how rich his mind was in pregnant suggestions and 
how fertile in the conception of generous and far- 
reaching plans. Few men in this country compre- 
hended so thoroughly the problems which are now 
set before the American universities or saw so clearly 
how those problems should be solved. 

[180 1 



HENRY SIMMONS FRIEZE 



I have thus rapidly sketched an outhne of the 
career of Dr. Frieze and have shown, however im- 
perfectly, the spirit in which he wrought through his 
long and beautiful life. The chief traits of his mind 
and character are familiar to us all. 

His mind was one of great activity and marked 
quickness of apprehension. Possessed of a highly 
nervous temperament, he had a certain restlessness 
of body and mind. This did not betray him, as 
it does some, into disjointed and fragmentary work, 
or lead him to hasty and immature decisions, but 
rather revealed itself in an intellectual eagerness 
and alertness and celerity. In his best days his 
enthusiasm made this promptness and vivacity of 
mental action contagious and highly stimulating to 
his pupils. 

In his reading, at least in his later years, he fol- 
lowed the old maxim of multum, non multa. He 
read a few masters thoroughly rather than many 
books superficially or even rapidly. But having in 
his early manhood obtained a reading knowledge 
of the French, German, Spanish, and Italian, as 
well as of the ancient classical languages, and having 
strong literary and aesthetic tastes, his studies in 
literature and in the history of art, and especially 
of music, had taken a pretty wide range. In any 
society of literary scholars or artists his well-stored 
mind was sure to contribute something of value and 
of interest to the conversation. He left upon them 
as upon his pupils the deep impression that he was 

[181] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



a man of rare culture, of true literary instincts, of 
the finest mental texture, of rich and generous 
attainments. But his literary and aesthetic sense, 
his artistic feeling, the justness of his critical judg- 
ment were more conspicuous than his learning. 

Perhaps no trait in his mental constitution was 
more marked than his love of the beautiful, whether 
in art or in nature. His soul was sensitive in the 
highest degree to any appeal which beauty made, 
whether through form or color or sound. Architec- 
ture, sculpture, painting, music, in all he delighted 
with the passion of an artist. His love of nature was 
like that of a poet. The grass, the flowers, the trees, 
the streams, he held sweet commerce with them all. 
Never was he happier than in his long rambles 
through the woods and fields. And how he loved 
our woods and fields. His strong local attachment 
to this place, which was always finding utterance 
in his conversation, gave him an enthusiasm about 
the scenery of this neighborhood on which his 
friends occasionally rallied him. But for miles 
around he could guide you to every "coigne of 
vantage," every shady nook, every meadow carpeted 
with the finest turf, every graceful sweep in the 
stream. With what ardor he would in your walk 
with him arrest your steps again and again, to dilate 
upon the charms of the bit of landscape before you. 
With what zest and pride he would exclaim, as from 
some hilltop he caught the view of the spires and 
towers of the city, "it is really finer than the view 

[182] 



HENRY SIMMONS FRIEZE 



of Oxford hanging on my wall." His love for the 
town and the University, and his delight in the 
pleasing scenery about us, made him often speak with 
gratitude of the kindly Providence which had cast 
his lot in what he regarded as an ideal home. 

Dr. Frieze's character was marked by an unusual 
combination of great modesty — I might perhaps 
say diffidence, or even shyness — with real courage. 
His modesty sometimes impressed those who did 
not know him well as timidity. He had a very 
humble estimate of his abilities and attainments. 
This diffidence caused him much anxiety in the 
earlier years of his work as a teacher. Even in 
these later years the visit of strangers to his class 
made him uncomfortable. He used to ask me not 
to bring visitors to his lecture room. When he had 
some important suggestion to make to the Faculty 
concerning University affairs, he often persuaded 
some one else to present it. Only when he was 
convinced that it was really necessary, often not 
until he was pressed by his colleagues for his opinion, 
would he speak in the Faculty meetings. He was 
ready enough to express his views on any subject 
in private conversation, but had the most unusual 
reluctance to present them formally and in public. 
But in the Faculty the respect for his opinion was 
such that when it was made known, whether through 
the lips of others or by himself, it carried great 
weight. Yet, notwithstanding his great modesty, 
when it became necessary to act and courage was 

[183 1 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



needed for the act, he was never found flinching 
from duty. He disliked controversy, avoided it 
when possible, and often averted it by his con- 
ciliatory spirit. But in great crises in the history of 
this Institution, though he was never clamorous in 
debate, he stood at his post firm as a rock for what 
he deemed wise and right, whether the issue was 
with insubordinate students or with external foes 
of the University. 

He was eminently social. He was fond of the 
society of friends with tastes congenial to his own, 
and was one of the most charming of companions 
and truest of friends. He loved good cheer. His 
conversation was vivacious and sparkling. His 
bearing was refined and attractive. Utterly free 
from all censoriousness, never indulging in acrid 
criticisms of others, his affectionate, generous nature 
won all hearts and imparted to them the same 
genial spirit which ever dwelt in him. He was a 
most welcome guest in every household. He carried 
sunshine into every company. His tender, sym- 
pathetic, loving nature gave a depth and richness 
to his more intimate friendship which only those 
who enjoyed it can measure. 

The religious life of Dr. Frieze was simple, sincere, 
and beautiful. Warmly attached to his own branch 
of the church, he had the most cathoHc and fraternal 
feeling for every other branch. One of the most 
interesting papers he ever wrote was a plea for the 
true Christian union of all believers, which he pre- 

[184] 



HENRY SIMMONS FRIEZE 



pared about a year ago for the Students' Christian 
Association. His faith was singularly childlike. 
To him religion was not something formal, not some- 
thing "to be worn on the sleeve," or obtrusively 
talked about in the market place, but the cheerful, 
trustful, reverent spirit of the Christian disciple, 
moulding and inspiring the whole life, in its pleasures 
as in its sorrows, in its daily routine of toil as in the 
hours of worship in the church. The vexed questions 
of philosophical, scientific, and theological speculation 
did not disturb the serenity of his soul. He under- 
stood their import. He appreciated and lamented 
the embarrassments of those who were troubled by 
them. But the foundations of his spiritual life, 
laid deep in a loving trust of his Heavenly Father 
and in the joyful following of the Lord Jesus Christ, 
were never shaken by the storms of discussion, 
which in this age beat upon every thoughtful mind. 
A soul more naturally and cheerfully devout than 
his, one that in all moods and all experiences was 
more completely transfused with the spirit of love 
to God and love to man, one of whom we may more 
truly say, 

"Whose Faith and work were bells of full accord" 

I have never known. 

And so death had no terrors for him. He often 
spoke of it to me as one speaks of a coming journey. 
At the beginning of each of the last two or three 
winters he has deemed it not improbable that bron- 

[185] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



chial or pulmonary complications might prove fatal 
to him. His chief anxiety seemed to be not about 
himself, but about his family, and about his depart- 
ment of work in the University. After the death 
of his dear friend and associate. Professor Elisha 
Jones, to whom he had hoped to leave the care of 
the instruction in Latin, he was extremely anxious 
that a successor in sympathy with his views of the 
conduct of the Latin work should be found and 
appointed. After his wish had been gratified and 
plans for the conduct of his department had been 
matured, and especially when the University year 
opened so prosperously, he was extremely happy. 
Again and again in his long walks with me in the 
early autumn he spoke of the gracious Providence 
which had during his life cast for him the lines in 
so pleasant places; of the charming memories of his 
college days, of his and my old-time friends in 
Rhode Island, of his pride in many of his former 
pupils, and especially in those who had become his 
colleagues in the Faculty, of the early struggles of 
the University, and of his confident hope of its future 
prosperity. Some months ago, after much urging 
on my part, I obtained from him a partial promise to 
make a sketch of his life, a promise which unhappily 
he did not live to fulfil. 

He began the labors of the year in good spirits 
and, as we thought, with a measure of strength which 
might at least carry him through the winter. We 
now know that the insidious and fatal disease which 

[186] 



HENRY SIMMONS FRIEZE 



caused his death was even then sapping the founda- 
tions of his life. He soon took a grave view of his 
malady. His mind became clouded at times. But 
it was pathetic — may we not say characteristic — 
that his spirit of love and tenderness seemed to 
shape his visions even in the wanderings of his mind. 
His attending physician has told us the touching 
story how, in those half-conscious hours of his last 
illness, he recited with apparent delight the names 
of associates — dear as pupils and colleagues and 
friends — and expressed his gratitude that they 
had so cheered his life. Pure and loving heart! 
not one of us ever gave to thee a tithe of what thou 
gavest to us. 

And now after all that I have said, after all that 
any one could say, I feel and you feel how far short 
my words have come, or any words can come, of 
making a complete portraiture of our friend. There 
was something in his winning personality that eluded 
analysis. There was in him a certain charm of soul 
which cannot be fully depicted with such an instru- 
ment as human speech. But memory will preserve 
for us the sweet recollections of the winsomeness of 
that personality, of the attractiveness of that spirit. 
And so for years to come his radiant presence will 
not be altogether lost to us. And so long as this 
University shall stand, something, we may hope, of 
the benign influence of this refined, devoted, noble 
scholar and teacher will remain as a factor in 
its life. 

[187 1 



VII 



THE INFLUENCE OF THE LAWYER 
OUTSIDE OF HIS PROFESSION 



FEBRUARY 22, 1911 
AN ADDRESS TO THE LAW STUDENTS 



VII 



THE INFLUENCE OF THE LAWYER 
OUTSIDE OF HIS PROFESSION 

JCjVERY professional man has from his special 
professional training his peculiar weakness and his 
peculiar power in spheres outside of his profession. 
His weakness springs from the one-sidedness or 
limitations of his knowledge and culture. His 
power flows from the fulness of his knowledge and 
richness of culture in his chosen study. For, since 
no field of thought is wholly isolated from every 
other, the power which is gained in his special 
pursuit may, and does, make itself felt beyond the 
boundaries of his profession. Almost every man 
betrays something of this weakness the moment 
he undertakes to pursue investigations which are 
in their essential nature very far removed from those 
which his daily calling demands. How difficult it 
is, for instance, for the physicists and the meta- 
physicians, or for many of the naturalists and the 
theologians, I will not say to agree, but simply to 
understand each other, to be just and fair to each 
other. They are accustomed to work with different 
tools, to employ different tests, to reach results by 
different processes, and yet it is not easy to convince 
them that they must exchange tools and tests and 
processes if they exchange works. If they do attempt 

[1911 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



to exchange their instruments, they often need the 
caution which is given to children who handle edged 
tools. The old maxim, ne sutor ultra crepidam, in 
its homely way recognizes the truth we have in mind. 
Full orbed, perfectly balanced, universal culture 
seems to be out of the reach of the greatest. Well 
for us if the striving for it does not land us in the 
distractions of poor Faust. Even the "many sided" 
Goethe, who with his rare genius sought for it 
through his long life, failed at last to get such an 
insight into religious truth as is possessed by many 
a humble man. There are, I doubt not, questions 
in law which a surgeon like Nelaton or Mayo, or a 
naturalist like Darwin or Huxley, would solve less 
promptly and justly than many a comparatively 
obscure attorney, even if the statutes and precedents 
bearing on the cases were made known to them, 
simply because the method, the spirit of legal 
procedure are entirely strange to them. 

Now it is hardly possible that the training and 
experience of a lawyer should not have some analo- 
gous perils. I do not feel prepared to specify them. 
Perhaps they are different for different men. Mr. 
Burke has told us that the practice of the law by 
itself is not apt, except in persons very happily 
born, to open and liberalize the mind exactly in the 
same proportion as it invigorates the understanding; 
and that eminent jurist. Judge Story, intimates 
that one who has given his exclusive attention to 
the study of his profession may be lacking in an 

[192] 



THE INFLUENCE OF THE LAWYER 

enlarged view of duty which wider range of studies 
would furnish, and that from this lack the profes- 
sion has sometimes been subjected to unpleasant 
reproaches. I have heard eminent lawyers complain 
of a tendency in some of their brethren to underrate 
the moral worth and honesty of men. Continually 
dealing with litigants who are not in the happiest 
frame of mind nor in the most favorable circum- 
stances for the display of the lovelier virtues, they 
have told me lawyers are in danger of acquiring the 
habit of forming judgments of men which, if gen- 
erally applied, are misleading and false. I think, too, 
I have seen lawyers who, by dint of years of hair- 
splitting, had acquired such a habit of quibbling 
on technicalities that their practical judgments in 
ordinary affairs commanded little respect and their 
tempers little approbation. At any rate we have 
all seen lawyers, as well as men of other professions, 
so imprisoned by the laws of their own vocation that 
they could see no beauty or truth save from the 
professional point of view. We have all heard of 
the mathematician who did not think much of 
"Paradise Lost" because it proved nothing. So 
eminent a man as Lord Coke, it is said, valued 
Chaucer above other poets, merely because the 
Yemannes Tale is a sort of poetical leading case, 
illustrating statute 5, Henry IV, chap. 4, against 
alchemy. Mr. Emerson wisely says "truth is an 
element of life, yet if a man fasten his attention on 
a single aspect of truth and apply himself to that 

[193] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



alone for a long time, the truth becomes distorted 
and is itself but falsehood." 

It is therefore well for the lawyer, like the rest of 
us, to be on his guard against this one-sidedness or 
limitation of training. If he would see clearly that 
large part of the world which lies beyond his pro- 
fession, or if he would touch men elsewhere than on 
their legal side, he must strive after that variety of 
training which tends to completeness or integrity of 
the mental and moral nature. Do you ask how can 
he do this? I know of no way save by making such 
excursions as he can into all fields of thought. It is 
possible by economy of time for almost anyone to 
learn the leading facts of some of the principal 
sciences and their "organons," their methods of 
reaching truth. One can at least learn enough to 
be tolerant of other tests of truth than those applied 
in one's own profession by seeking free conversation 
with competent men of other professions. Indeed, 
the highest view of your professional work would 
almost compel you to this search into all sciences, 
if we may follow that great master. Brougham, 
in believing that "jurisprudence pushes its roots into 
all the grounds of human science and spreads its 
branches over every object that concerns mankind." 
Or, if we follow one of our greatest American lawyers, 
we may hold that "in its widest extent, it may be 
said to compass almost every human action, and in 
its minute details to measure every human duty." 
Some may be stimulated to seek a corrective culture 

[194] 



THE INFLUENCE OF THE LAWYER 

in the study of natural science, as they remember 
how Lord Bacon's famous Ordinances continue to 
be the pole star which directs the practice of our 
Chancery Courts, as one of our renowned jurists 
has said, while, as every one knows, his Novum 
Organum is the pole star which has directed all 
scientific investigation from his day to ours. 

Our English literature, with its many voiced wis- 
dom, breathing the spirit of every variety of mind, 
is within the easy reach of all. And, therefore, 
would I recommend the study of literature, and 
especially of our own, above all other studies as the 
best help in securing balance and richness and ful- 
ness of development. How has one of our great 
lawyers, who illustrated as few have the possibil- 
ity of combining large literary attainments with 
the most brilliant professional success, depicted the 
power of literature even to save the reason of the 
over-tasked advocate. In his Address at the dedica- 
tion of the Peabody Institute, Rufus Choate pictures 
the tired lawyer coming home, his temples throbbing, 
his nerves shattered, from a trial of a week, miserable, 
disappointed, wellnigh inconsolable. 

"With a superhuman effort he opens his book 
and in the twinkling of an eye he is looking into 
the full 'orb of Homeric or Miltonic song,' or he 
stands in the crowd, breathless, yet swayed as 
forests or the sea by winds, hearing and to judge the 
Pleadings for the Crown; or the philosophy which 
soothed Cicero and Boethius in their afflictions, in 

[195] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



exile, prison, and the contemplation of death, breathes 
over his petty cares like the sweet south; or Pope 
or Horace laughs him into good humor; or he walks 
with ^Eneas and the Sibyl in the mild light of the 
world of the laurelled dead; and the court house is as 
completely forgotten as the dreams of a pre-Adamite 
life. Well may he prize that endeared charm, so 
effectual and safe, without which the brain had 
long ago been chilled by paralysis or set on fire by 
insanity." 

I know it has sometimes been thought that fame 
as a literary scholar detracts from a lawyer's reputa- 
tion, if not from his worth. But when we recall 
the elegant scholarship of our Wirts and Pinkneys 
and Legares, when we remember that our greatest 
juridical light, John Marshall, found his solace and 
refreshment in the meritorious novels and poems of 
our literature, even wooed the muses himself; that 
Lord Stowell, the great master of Admiralty Law, 
and Blackstone, the Commentator, were possessed 
of the most generous literary culture; that Lord 
Mansfield, who may, I suppose, almost be called the 
originator of our modern Commercial Law, was not 
only a brilliant scholar, but moreover was so endowed 
with poetical gifts that Pope in his graceful line, 

"How sweet an Ovid in a Murray lost," 

regrets that the muses had been obliged to give him 
up to the law; that the great French Chancellor 
D'Aguesseau was only less accomplished in general 

[196] 



THE INFLUENCE OF THE LAWYER 

letters than in the Civil and the Canon Law, was so 
familiar with the classics that at the age of eighty 
he was wont to correct from memory the misquota- 
tions of learned scholars from the Greek and Latin 
poets; that the great work of Grotius, "De Jure Belli 
ac Pacis," which has had a greater influence upon 
the fortunes of the race than any book that has 
been written in the last three centuries, is crowded 
with learning which its gifted author had drawn 
from all history and literature, we may well believe 
that it is possible for a great lawyer to be a master 
of letters and to draw from them comfort and inspi- 
ration and power. 

But the lawyer has also a power outside of his 
profession because of his training as a lawyer. 
The effects of this power are most clearly seen in 
public affairs. I do not now refer to the labors of 
lawyers who have formally entered upon the career 
of politicians or statesmen, but only to the influence 
which as private citizens they are able to exert in 
shaping public opinion and public action. That 
power acts sometimes aggressively, sometimes in 
a conservative manner. More than once it has 
underlain great popular movements, — revolutions 
even. Every student of history knows that when 
the Gentlemen of the Robe in France became a 
constituent part of the burgher class the weight of 
their influence, the power of their ideas, worked a 
change in the condition of that class which might 
be called a revolution. It became a power in the 

[ 197 ] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



realm, and that not merely because the king in his 
struggles with the Pope was obliged to call lawyers 
into his council, but because of the dissemination 
by the lawyers throughout the burgher class of 
ideas of justice and right which their studies taught 
them. The stubborn resistance of that famous court, 
the Parliament of Paris, to the encroachments of the 
Pope on Gallican liberties, and often to the tyranny 
of kings from the time of Louis XI down through 
the Orleans regency to the Revolution of '89, which 
it so hastened by demanding the meeting of the States 
General, was of incalculable influence in saving France 
from utter submission to civil and ecclesiastical 
tyranny. For it not only placed legal obstacles in 
the path of popes and kings, but also fired the hearts 
of the people to a new zeal for their rights. A 
renowned English historian has wisely said that, 
fertile as France is in great men, she might better 
spare from her annals any class of them than her 
lawyers. 

How English lawyers from old Bracton down to 
Brougham have as lawyers and judges helped fight 
the battle of English liberty is familiar to all. My 
Lord Coke's imperishable answer to James I in 
the famous case of the Commendams that "when 
occasion came he should do what would become a 
judge," has been in practice said on the bench a 
thousand times over in the great struggle between 
privilege and prerogative, and every such reply to 
the demands of arrogant authority was later a 

[198] 



THE INFLUENCE OF THE LAWYER 

trumpet appeal to the people, stirring their hearts 
to withstand all encroachments of power. It was 
with an unerring instinct that Laud and Strafford 
strove to put down the common lawyers as one of 
the first steps in their tyrannical schemes. "I 
disdain," writes Strafford, "to see the gownsmen in 
this sort hang their noses over the flowers of the 
crown." Yes, but there they did hang their noses 
till the last of those flowers, which Strafford so 
prized, withered and perished on the scaffold at 
Whitehall. 

Who can measure the force of the impulse which 
James Otis, the Adamses, Patrick Henry, Charles 
Pinkney, and the other lawyers of their time lent 
to our revolutionary movement, simply because as 
lawyers they were able to draw so sharply the line 
beyond which every step of the mother country 
was defiant of the very spirit of English law, as well 
as of liberty. The maxims of that law, whose pride 
it was to be the jealous guardian and protector of 
the liberty of the subject, had become inwrought into 
their very being, and wherever they were — in the 
church, in court, in the street, in town meeting — 
they were, day and night, bracing up their neighbors 
and friends to resist the unlawful aggressions of the 
king. The people hung upon the lips of these ex- 
pounders of the laws of the realm and of the eternal 
principles of right and, inspired to heroic endeavor, 
marched forth to the conflict and to victory. We 
specially commemorate to-day the birthday of Wash- 

[199 1 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



ington, but we may well remember that it was the 
great lawyers of his day who framed the issue for 
which the soldier fought and, later, shaped the 
immortal constitution under which Washington 
administered our government with such wisdom, 
and under which our national greatness has been 
achieved. 

But while lawyers, as lawyers, have thus enabled 
men to see what just laws entitle them to claim, and 
have so led the very van of revolutions, they do also, 
by virtue of their training and work, exert a salutary 
conservative power on society. If they encourage 
men to claim what just laws entitle them to, they 
do also discourage enterprises, whether private or 
public, which are hostile to the spirit of law and 
justice. All their habits of mind must tend in that 
direction. They are accustomed to bow to the deci- 
sions of courts. A wise writer has said "the nervous 
language of the Common Law, the impressive forms 
of our courts, and the precision and substantial 
truth of the legal distinctions are the contribution 
of all the sharp-sighted, strong-minded men who have 
lived in the countries where these laws govern." 
It is not strange that the profession should reverence 
the wisdom and sacredness of law. They attach 
weight to venerable precedents. They are compelled 
to view both sides of questions. They are constantly 
warned against hasty conclusions. They have a 
lofty ideal of the functions of the state. A certain 
steadiness and sobriety of mind, a sort of judicial 

[200] 



THE INFLUENCE OF THE LAWYER 

habit of deliberation, a desire to see good reasons 
for change in any of our usages or institutions, 
before advocating such a change, all these qualities 
seem to me to justify the splendid eulogium which 
one of our great lawyers has pronounced upon the 
Bar for its conservative force. 

I believe that what may be termed these extra- 
professional services of the lawyers in demanding 
for liberty all that just law can give her and in 
restraining public opinion from wild excursions into 
the domain of lawlessness are not appreciated as they 
deserve. Perhaps it is also true that the profession 
do not always realize their accountability for the 
wise use of this power which comes to them by virtue 
of their calling. At any rate I wish to commend with 
emphasis the cultivation of this conservative spirit, 
when so many unwise governmental fads, including a 
popular recall of judges, are afloat in the air. 

But not only do lawyers while strictly adhering to 
their special work exert a peculiar influence upon 
society, but many of them wield a much greater 
power over the public by their labors in a profession, 
if I may so call it, which is closely allied to their 
own. Just as the clergy find themselves almost 
necessarily concerned with the direction of education, 
and many of them naturally come to fill chairs of 
instruction in our schools and colleges, so the study 
and work of a lawyer open the door to the career 
of a legislator and statesman. The profession is 
entered upon by not a few simply because it seems 

[201] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



to furnish the best stepping stone to public life. 
But many a worthy lawyer who has no undue itching 
for pohtical preferment finds himself at times almost 
constrained to exchange his professional work for 
less remunerative toil in the chambers of legislation. 
Doubtless many are pretty easily constrained, and 
some give notice in advance that they are willing to 
be persuaded. But in spite of the frequent com- 
plaints of the undue representation of the legal pro- 
fession in our legislative bodies, the history of our 
legislation shows that there is no superfluity of 
technical skill in framing our statutes. That is 
an unusually wise and careful Legislature in any 
State which does not by its tinkering and blundering 
at any session furnish pretty steady work for the 
judges until the next session in correcting its mistakes. 
It has been urged in some parts of the country as 
a strong argument for preferring biennial to annual 
sessions that they furnish only half as many mistakes 
to correct. 

It is foreign to my present purpose to attempt to 
say just when a lawyer may wisely suspend his 
professional work to enter upon public office. Look- 
ing at facts as they are, I find that a large number 
of lawyers have chosen, and do still choose, and as I 
believe to the great advantage of the public, to essay 
the work of legislators and statesmen. I cannot err 
in assuming that the usual proportion of your number 
will pursue the same course. And therefore I say 
it is your duty to have regard to this fact in shaping 

[202] 



THE INFLUENCE OF THE LAWYER 

your studies. I think that in your plans of work 
you should contemplate the largest possible attain- 
ments in those departments of learning which every 
statesman should strive to master. And those 
departments lie so closely upon the border land of 
the law — some of them being indeed largely within 
its territory — that a considerable acquaintance 
with them is essential to a broad and generous legal 
culture. Their inviting fields are so constantly 
within the range of your vision, as you pursue your 
strictly professional studies, that I hardly know how 
you can resist the temptation to make some excur- 
sions into them and to bring back some grapes from 
Eschol to refresh you in the routine of your daily 
work. Still we do see many painful proofs that dry, 
hard, narrow minds may pursue your vocation as a 
trade and be content with a pettifogger's success, or 
if they enter upon political life may aspire to no 
higher achievement than the skilful manipulation of 
caucuses and the appropriation of partisan spoils. 
No broad views of juridical science or of any allied 
branch are desired or needed by them. 

Beheving, however, that you have loftier aspira- 
tions and juster conceptions of your opportunities, 
may I venture to suggest to those who would be 
prepared for public service certain studies which may 
claim some of your attention in those early years of 
your practice when crowding clients and "flowing 
fees " may not too much disturb the tranquillity of 
your oflSce? 

[203] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



I would mention, first, History. I know that there 
have been men high in oflSce who knew little history 
and less geography. We have all read how the 
Duke of Newcastle hurried to his sovereign, George 
the Third, in the days of colonial troubles, with the 
announcement as of something new, — that Cape 
Breton was an island, — and the news was a surprise 
both to the king and half the cabinet. We are told 
that Castlereagh gave up the Island of Java to the 
Dutch in the treaty of Vienna because he could not 
find it on the map. But no one could have read 
Blackstone's and Kent's Commentaries without 
seeing how large a harvest the study of the history of 
England and of our own country must yield to the 
student of law and how indispensable it is to all who 
undertake conspicuous work in legislation. I need 
not delay on this obvious truth," I would merely make 
two simple suggestions: first, that, in my opinion, 
we have far more of practical value to us to learn 
in the Plantagenet period of English history and in 
the continental history from the thirteenth to the 
sixteenth century than is generally supposed, and 
secondly, that we should look beneath the mere 
facts of history to the underlying principles. What 
you call somewhat contemptuously, I believe, a 
case lawyer, finds the exact counterpart in what 
may be named the fact historian. What you want 
of history is to find the principles which have deter- 
mined the growth of States, the protection of liberty, 
the defence of right. If you do not get this out of 

[204] 



THE INFLUENCE OF THE LAWYER 

your history, your knowledge of the succession of 
kings and empires is of no more worth than Homer's 
catalogue of the Grecian ships, or the advertisement 
of an auction sale upon the fence post at the next 
corner. 

Then the science of Political Economy should 
receive much more thorough and extended study 
than is given to it by most of our legislators. This 
is true, even if we regard it, as most English and 
American writers do, merely as the science of wealth. 
If there are any laws which govern the production, 
exchange, and distribution of wealth, if there are any 
sound principles of right or even expediency which 
should regulate our currency, our banking, the rela- 
tions of capital and labor, our systems of taxation, 
our domestic and our foreign trade, it is of the 
utmost consequence to us and to yourselves that 
you, who are to do so much to shape our public policy, 
should be familiar with those laws and those princi- 
ples. If the large experience of other nations has 
any lessons of wisdom for legislators, you should 
know those lessons. But I believe that the time 
has come when our statesmen should expand their 
conception of what is commonly termed political 
economy till it comprises something more than the 
laws of wealth, till it becomes in a high and just sense 
of the term social science. Many of the continental 
writers have taken broader and more correct views 
of the real scope of the science than the English. 
They study in it not only all those forces which 

[205] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



directly result in the acquisition of wealth, but also 
charities, education, religious, penal and reformatory 
institutions, public utilities, corporations, trusts, 
social theories, all the forces which essentially shape 
and color the life of the state and of society. Not 
that we should imitate those monarchical govern- 
ments which undertake to control the whole devel- 
opment of individual and national life in matters 
temporal and spiritual by statutory and police inter- 
vention. But a statesman who is called to legislate 
can wisely determine the proper limits of legislation 
only by a profound knowledge of the true function 
and possible power of all the forces which can effect 
a national life. Half the secret of legislative wisdom 
consists of finding out what it is not necessary to do. 
And he is the best guarded against inflicting on us 
the evil of over-much legislation and the evil of 
unwise or useless legislation who can see exactly 
what can be done by other forces than those of 
statutes and officers of the law. It is the science 
of society in this large sense which I desire to 
commend. 

Another study to which every lawyer who is 
looking to public life should give some attention 
is that of International Law. Indeed, it might well 
be commended to every one for its fascination and 
for its tendency to broaden and enrich the mind. 
Ninety years ago Judge Story, in addressing the 
Suffolk Bar, said "there is nothing that can give so 
high a finish or so brilliant an ornament or so exten- 

[206] 



THE INFLUENCE OF THE LAWYER 

sive an instruction as this pursuit to a professional 
education." It involves in its discussion so many 
of the fundamental principles of historical, of ethical, 
and of legal science, it is concerned with issues of 
such transcendent consequence, it so cheers the 
heart which rejoices to read the bright proofs of 
the moral progress of the race in the increasing 
humaneness of its code, it so compels even desolating 
wars to write with the pens of fire new articles of 
justice and mercy and Christian forbearance on the 
great statute book of nations, and although the 
science can be fairly called only two centuries and 
a half old, it has been expounded and illustrated by 
the genius of so many of the ablest publicists and 
statesmen of Europe and America that rather than 
urge you to pursue it, I ought perhaps to caution 
you, if you once begin it, against letting its charms 
divert you too much from your regular work. I 
am not now addressing you as lawyers, who may be 
called to practise in admiralty courts, but as men 
who in public stations, perhaps charged as mem- 
bers of Congress with the responsibility of decid- 
ing whether we have just cause of war with some 
great nation, possibly as senators with the power 
of aiding in making treaties, at any rate as mem- 
bers of a profession whose influence on questions of 
international law must have vast weight in moulding 
the public sentiment in critical hours, and I say that 
it seems in the highest degree desirable both for your 
own reputation and for the public welfare that you 

[207] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



should master at least the leading principles of this 
beautiful branch of juridical science. 

There remains yet one other subject to which I 
would turn the eyes of those who would train them- 
selves for large service in public life; that is Political 
Philosophy. I think I do not attach undue impor- 
tance to theories of government. I do not forget the 
famous remark of a great statesman that "a young 
man who is not an enthusiast in matters of govern- 
ment must possess low and grovelling principles of 
action and that an old man who is an enthusiast 
must have lived to little purpose." But, after all, it 
is of real service to us to-day to know what Aristotle 
and Cicero and Locke and Burke and Hamilton have 
thought upon great political problems. With all 
the fluctuations of human life, with all the changes 
which centuries bring in the condition of men, the 
constant, the unchanging is a larger element than 
the variable. And many of the words of those great 
masters might well be inscribed on our legislative 
halls to-day for our guidance. For many of the 
problems which were discussed on the bema and on 
the rostrum were essentially those which are under 
discussion to-day in Westminster or in Washington. 
Not to speak of Plato's ideal republic, though Mr. 
Jowett in his charming introduction to his beautiful 
translation has taught us not to scorn the practical 
lessons which it may teach us to-day, no man can 
afford to be ignorant of Aristotle's treatise on Politics, 
the most profound work which the ancient world 

[208] 



THE INFLUENCE OF THE LAWYER 

gave US on that subject, if indeed it is not the most 
profound the world has ever seen, and yet it may be 
read between sun and sun. It is not much longer 
than the speech of a Congressman, — by no means so 
extensive as Sir John Coleridge's plea in the Tich- 
borne case, which is said to have been twenty-three 
days long and six hours wide. Object as you must 
to his views of slavery, yet delight to refresh your 
spirit by communing with the philosopher who first 
perceived those two great truths : first, that the social 
state is the natural state, in other words, that man 
is a political animal, and second, that political liberty 
is the true foundation of the prosperity of the state. 
Starting from him, we may come down through 
the centuries and mark the gradual development of 
those political ideas which we accept as axioms, but 
which were evolved by severest thought and main- 
tained in blood. See how the Stoical philosophers 
rose to the conception of the human race as one great 
city or society and prepared the way for the Roman 
lawyers to assert the equality of all men before the 
great law of nature in that famous phrase, omnes 
homines natura acquales sunt, which Jefferson wrested 
from the old Roman code and clothed with a new 
and more glorious meaning and bound on the brow 
of new-born American hberty to shine there forever 
as a star and a light to the oppressed of all nations. 
See then Christianity appearing and declaring the 
brotherhood of men and aiming to establish the City 
of God among men. See spring up in Christian 

[209] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



society the two great parties who so long contended 
for the mastery, the one striving to subject the state 
to the church in accordance with that theocratic 
doctrine of poHtical philosophy which that gifted 
and acute schoolman, Thomas Aquinas, has ex- 
pounded with such marvellous ability; the other, the 
laic party, contending for the independence of the 
state from ecclesiastical control through the mouth 
of that great polemic of the thirteenth century, 
William of Ockham, who wields the dialectic weapons 
of the mediaeval logic with resistless power and is 
crowned with victory. Listen to the words of the 
great Italian, Machiavelli, who if he leaves us in 
doubt concerning his true character, leaves us in no 
doubt concerning his deep insight into the gravest 
problems of politics. It may not be without profit 
even to us, citizens of a republic, to hear what 
Hobbes of England and Bossuet in France can say 
in defence of absolutism, the one basing it on the 
wild fiction of the irrevocable cession of rights by 
the people to the sovereign, and giving that sovereign 
unlimited power; the other basing it on the will of 
God and holding the sovereign responsible to divine 
law for his use of authority. It is well for us to 
thrill our hearts and stir our blood by hearing 
Sidney and Milton and Locke in their great pleas 
for human freedom. With these fresh in our memory 
do we not still celebrate the seventeenth century as 
the era when liberty first spoke with articulate voice 
those inspiring words which have ever since been 

[210] 



THE INFLUENCE OF THE LAWYER 

sounding in the ears of tyrants and summoning them 
to judgment? Or, crossing the channel, have we, 
with our mixed and balanced government, nothing 
to learn from that calm and profoimd French inves- 
tigator, Montesquieu, who, though believing in the 
usefulness of a hereditary nobility, was animated 
by a love for national liberty, and has proved by 
his careful study of governmental systems that the 
separation and distribution of the powers of govern- 
ment are essential conditions of liberty? Shall we 
not also hear Rousseau with his matchless eloquence 
expounding his doctrine of the social compact? 
Fiction though it is, it is so splendid a fiction that 
it is almost better than truth. For, like so many 
legal fictions, it has proved of immense historical 
significance and has helped almost more than any- 
thing else to carry the race up to the general accept- 
ance of that great doctrine of human equality which 
lies at the base of our system of government, which 
overturned the monarchy in France, and which is 
rapidly leavening the whole civilized world. 

The statesman of to-day cannot afford to begin 
his study of political principles with the platform of 
his party or even with the Constitution of the 
United States. As well might the lawyer content 
himself with reading the latest digest of the statutes 
of his State. No, he needs to go back to the foun- 
tains, whence these streams of political ideas and 
principles flowed, to study them in all their course 
and see what thriving villages and populous cities 

[211] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



and happy homes have sprung up on the banks 
before he can comprehend their true spirit and 
power. Our greatest statesmen have not spurned 
such study. See on almost every page of the 
Federahst, perhaps the most vahiable contribution 
this nation has made to poHtical hterature, the 
proofs of the f amiKarity of the writers with the best 
poKtical thinking of ancient and modern days. 
Mr. Webster, who I suppose most of us will now agree 
combined more successfully than almost any other 
American the intellectual gifts and attainments of 
a great lawyer and a great statesman, was not better 
read in the text-books of law than in those of politics. 
Mr. Choate tells us that Mr. Webster had read and 
weighed Aristotle, Cicero, MachiavelH, Harrington, 
Milton, Locke — that in fact nothing in politics 
worthy of attention had escaped him; nothing of 
the ancient or modern jurisprudence; nothing which 
Greek or Roman or European speculation in that 
walk had explored, or Greek or Roman or Euro- 
pean or universal history or public biography had 
exemplified. 

I cannot err in asking you to follow such illustrious 
examples in thoroughly furnishing your minds for 
public life by the pursuit of these generous studies. 
But if you never try the discomforts of official 
station, such studies will not be without their high 
uses. May I venture to suggest by way of caution 
that those of you who enter upon public life be care- 
ful not to forget when at the Bar your legal habits 

[212] 



THE INFLUENCE OF THE LAWYER 

and methods. I suppose a careful analysis would 
show that the habits of mind which practice at the 
Bar cultivates differ somewhat from those which are 
fostered by service in the halls of legislation and 
on the busting or the stump. So true is this that 
it is somewhat rare to find a man who stands 
indisputably first in both spheres of action. Am I 
wrong in supposing that while the work of the lawyer 
is by no means unfriendly to depth and grasp of 
mind, it does tend to cultivate precision, acuteness, 
a strictly logical power, and a respect for precedents 
more than the career of a Congressman or a Com- 
moner, while the life of the latter may perhaps more 
directly tend to give largeness of view, to develop 
the talent of popular address, but also to temper 
the remorselessness of logic by a rhetorical or political 
compromise. Whatever the difference may consist 
in, there certainly is one, and it behooves you to 
beware of the fact. In whichever arena you do 
battle, use the weapons, and only those, which belong 
to that arena. And be not impatient to exchange 
those which you wield triumphantly in the halls of 
justice for those which are used in the senate house. 
Success, fairly won in the former, is not less honorable, 
perhaps not less useful, than in the latter. I hope 
that no words of mine may be taken as advice to 
you generally to seek any other employment than 
the legitimate work of your profession. The worthy 
ambition of any one of you might justly be satisfied 
with the attainment of a respectable position in 

[213] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



the profession of which Sir James Mackintosh says, 
"it furnishes the most honorable occupation of the 
understanding," and with your admission to a be- 
coming place in that brotherhood which has been 
rendered illustrious by its Marshalls and Mansfields 
and Hales and L'Hopitals and so many of the wisest 
and noblest and most gifted of men. Glory enough 
might it be for most of you to be able to say at the 
end of your career that you have brought no stain 
upon the escutcheon of the illustrious fraternity 
who will soon open wide their gates to welcome you 
to their goodly fellowship. 

I cannot but appeal to your pride in looking for- 
ward to a profession whose highest tribunal is in the 
exercise of its constitutional powers just now wield- 
ing so mighty and beneficent an influence towards the 
establishment of a permanent international court, 
whose peaceful procedure shall take the place of war 
in settling international controversies. Our nation 
has played a large part in providing through The 
Hague conferences for arbitral tribunals and for 
setting the example to the world of resorting to 
them. As our Supreme Court in determining suits 
between sovereign states is the first and only court 
in the world to exercise such powers, the European 
statesmen, unaccustomed to such judicial authority 
and somewhat puzzled by our example, are yet 
listening to our appeals to them to join with us in 
establishing not merely arbitral tribunals on special 
occasions, but also permanent international tribunals, 

[214] 



THE INFLUENCE OF THE LAWYER 

composed of permanent judges rather than temporary 
arbiters to settle with authority the controversies of 
states, as our Supreme Court has long settled them 
between the States of our own nation. Our Secretary 
of State speaks hopefully of the negotiations he 
is now conducting on the subject. Our supreme 
national tribunal will, in case of success, be the 
prototype of the great tribunal of the world and the 
most powerful conservator of peace. 

In conclusion, may I say that if any one of you is 
ambitious to exert a beneficent influence outside of 
your profession for which the world is so indebted to 
your brethren, you must be, and every one can be, 
something more than a human digest of statutes or a 
walking volume of reports. Serve your profession 
as though she were your bride, giving her your affec- 
tion, your talent, and your zeal, even though she be 
a jealous bride. But remember, the larger and the 
richer is your general culture, the more complete and 
balanced is your intellectual and moral development, 
the more a rich and generous manhood overlaps and 
enfolds and transfuses and inspires your profession, 
the broader and deeper and more enduring will be 
your influence as a lawyer, a citizen, a statesman, and 
a man. 



215] 



VIII 

THE INADEQUATE RECOGNITION OF 
DIPLOMATISTS BY HISTORIANS 



JULY 11, 1893 

INAUGURAL ADDRESS AS PRESIDENT OF THE 

AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION 

DELIVERED AT CHICAGO 



VIII 

THE INADEQUATE RECOGNITION OF 
DIPLOIVIATISTS BY HISTORIANS 

1 HE scholars of our time have often congratulated 
themselves that historical writers have in these 
later years been giving a wider scope to their work 
than the older historians gave to theirs. These 
later writers, in describing the history of a nation, 
have not confined themselves to the records of battles 
and of court intrigues and of royal genealogies. 
They have deemed it proper to give us some idea of 
the progress of the nation in letters, in art, in science, 
in economic development, in religion, in all that 
makes up what we call civilization. They have 
attempted to give us a vivid and accurate conception 
of the forces and the processes which have made 
nations what they are. And they have had in mind 
the true ideal of the historian's task. 

But in the course of my studies I have been led 
to the conviction that most of the general historical 
narratives have failed to set forth with suflScient 
fulness the important features of great diplomatic 
transactions, and have failed even more signally 
in specific recognition of the signal merits of many 
of the gifted negotiators of epoch-making treaties. 
The work of international congresses, which have 
[219] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



remade the map of Europe or the maps of other 
continents, which have extinguished the Hfe of proud 
and ancient states or have created new states, which 
have given larger freedom to commerce and wider 
hberty in the use of the high seas, which have miti- 
gated the cruelties of war and have swept the slave 
trade from the ocean; this work, so wide and far- 
reaching in its influence, of the diplomatic representa- 
tives of powerful states has been often passed over 
altogether by historians of renown or dismissed with 
the most succinct summary which was possible. 
Even where the results of negotiations are given it is 
rare that one finds any fairly complete account of 
the processes by which these results were reached. 
May we not fairly ask whether to the reader of 
ordinary intelligence the important details of the 
discussions and deliberations in the congress at 
Munster are not of as much consequence as the 
details of any battle of the Thirty Years' War.^^ 
Are not the particulars of the debates between 
Franklin and Jay and John Adams on the one side, 
and Oswald and Strachey and Fitzherbert on the 
other, in framing our Treaty of Independence, of as 
much interest and consequence as the details of 
the battle of Trenton .^^ 

But even when the results of negotiations are 
given with some fulness and estimated with justice, 
for the most part little or none of the credit which 
is due is given to the men who have brought the 
negotiations to a successful issue. Generally not 



RECOGNITION OF DIPLOMATISTS 

even their names are mentioned. The consequence 
is that no class of pubHc servants of equal merit is 
so inadequately appreciated even by those who are 
pretty well read in history. Our very school children 
are so taught that the names of great generals, 
Wallenstein and Tilly, Marlborough and Prince 
Eugene, Turenne and Conde, Washington and 
Greene, are familiar to them. But if you will try 
a simple experiment, as I have done several times, 
upon persons of cultivation, I venture the guess 
that you will find that scholars of considerable 
familiarity with European history cannot tell and 
cannot say that they have ever known who were the 
principal negotiators of the Peace of Westphalia, 
or of treaties of such historical importance as those 
of Nimeguen, Ryswick, Utrecht, or Paris of 1763, 
or Paris of 1856. And the reason is not far to seek. 
It is because most of the general histories of the 
periods to which those treaties belong have little 
or nothing to say of the envoys who, with much 
toil and discussion, wrought them out. To learn 
the names of those neglected men, and especially 
to learn anything of their personaHty, one must have 
recourse to special diplomatic histories or personal 
memoirs, when such can be found. 

If my impression of the treatment which important 
diplomatic work has received in most of our general 
histories is correct, I think we shall all agree that 
they are seriously deficient in this regard. If any 
events in European history for the last two centuries 

[221 ] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



and a half have been of vital importance, the negotia- 
tion of some of the treaties I have named must be 
ranked as such. When we recall how the Peace of 
Westphalia weakened the German Empire, strength- 
ened France, adjusted the relations of the three great 
branches of the church in Germany, and practically 
established the modern state system of Europe; or 
how the Treaty of Utrecht permanently separated 
the crowns of France and Spain, added to England's 
possessions Newfoundland, Hudson Bay, Acadia, 
St. Kitts, Gibraltar, and Minorca, and fixed the 
Hanoverian succession, enlarged the power of Savoy, 
and recognized the King of Prussia; how the Treaty 
of Paris of 1763 gave Canada and the Floridas and 
the navigation of the Mississippi to England, and 
how the Treaty of Paris of 1856 abolished privateer- 
ing and established new guarantees to neutral trade 
upon all the seas, who shall say that the framing of 
these treaties and of others, hardly less important, 
does not deserve ample treatment, and that the talent 
and skill of the men who negotiated them does not 
deserve generous recognition in our more important 
general histories as well as in the special diplomatic 
histories.'^ 

The distinguished publicist, Pradier-Fodere, has 
well said that a good minister is sometimes equal to 
an army of a hundred thousand men. Pyrrhus is 
credited with the remark that his envoy, Cyneas, 
had given him more cities than any of his generals. 
John Adams, who filled so many high offices with 

[222 1 



RECOGNITION OF DIPLOMATISTS 

honor, was apparently, and justly, prouder of his 
treaty with the Netherlands, which he procured in 
the face of wellnigh insuperable obstacles, than of 
almost any other achievement of his life. His no 
less distinguished son, John Quincy Adams, declared 
that he considered his signature of the so-called 
Florida Treaty with Spain in 1819 the most impor- 
tant event of his hfe. 

It may be said in answ^er to my plea for the ampler 
recognition of the services of great diplomatists that 
they only register the results which the great soldiers 
have really secured, and therefore deserve less fame 
than the generals. To this two rejoinders can fairly 
be offered: first, while war may decide that one 
nation is to gather the larger part of the fruits of a 
negotiation with another, it does not decide the 
details of the settlement to be made. And in fixing 
these, in determining with large foresight the con- 
sequences of particular adjustments, in felicity of 
statement, in cogency of discussion, in knowledge 
of international law, in weight of personality, the 
representatives of the conquered nation may, and 
often do, win back much of what seemed to have 
been WTested away by the victorious sword of the 
antagonist. The skilful diplomatists of Louis XIV 
repeatedly enhanced the value of his victories and 
diminished the losses incurred by his defeats. The 
American victory at Yorktown determined the 
fact that we should somehow have our indepen- 
dence, but we owe it to our commissioners at Paris, 

[223] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



especially to Jay, rather than to the generals in 
command of our armies, that Great Britain was con- 
strained to treat with us as an equal and independent 
nation, that we did not accept independence as a 
grant from the mother country, that our treaty 
was a treaty of partition and not of concession. 
The important results of that fact are familiar to us 
all. By no means is the work of the negotiator done 
by the military commander. 

And, secondly, some of the most important 
negotiations are not the consequence of war, are not 
preceded by war. Rather they serve to prevent 
war. Take as an example the Treaty of Washington 
of 1871, popularly known as the Alabama Treaty. 
It was drawn to remove the dangerous causes of 
dissension between us and Great Britain. Few 
events in our national life have been of more conse- 
quence than the negotiation and execution of that 
treaty. It belongs to so recent a date that most of 
us remember distinctly the meeting of the high joint 
commissioners who framed it. Does any one now 
question the supreme importance of their work? 
And yet how few even of the well-informed citizens 
of Great Britain or of the United States can repeat 
the names, I will not say of all, but of the most 
prominent members of that commission. Do our 
school children find them given in any of the manuals 
of United States history which are placed in their 
hands? 

It is then far from true that the value of the 
[224 1 



RECOGNITION OF DIPLOMATISTS 

services of diplomatists is wholly dependent on the 
deeds of the soldier. In some cases it is not true 
that they are at all determined by military achieve- 
ments. There is no good reason why the historian 
should with emphasis dwell on the skill of generals 
and be silent concerning the genius and the work of 
great masters of the diplomatic art. 

Let us now notice briefly what we do find in some 
of our histories concerning a few important treaties 
and the men who drew them. Take the great 
treaties negotiated at Munster and Osnabruck, to 
which as a whole the name of the Peace of West- 
phalia is generally given. All will agree that it is 
one of the most important events in the history of 
modern Europe. Of course no history of the great 
continental states in the seventeenth century can 
altogether omit reference to it. But if we turn to 
Dyer's Modern Europe, or Russell's Modern Europe, 
or Crowe's France, or among German works to 
Kohlrausch's History of Germany or to Menzel's, 
the subject is touched very lightly or not at all, and 
nothing can be learned from them about the negotia- 
tions. Coxe's House of Austria, which gives a good 
succinct summary of the treaties, is silent about 
the men who made them. One might suppose that 
Gindely's Thirty Years' War would at least have 
had a closing chapter on the treaties. But it has 
not a word, though the American translator has 
added a chapter in which some attention is given 
to the subject. And apparently the call upon the 

[ 225 ] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



author by readers, who were surprised at his omission, 
led him to pubHsh a Httle supplemental brochure to 
supply it. Martin, the French historian, treats the 
subject, as he does other negotiations, with consid- 
erable fulness, and gives his readers an idea of who 
the negotiators were. 

But if one would learn much of the details of the 
transactions or of the traits even of the leading 
negotiators, one must turn to such special histories 
as Bougeaut's Histoire des Guerres et des Nego- 
ciations qui precederent le Traite de Westphalie 
and Le Clerc's Negociations Secretes or Garden's 
Histoire des Traites de Paix. He could there 
find that France was represented by the Count 
d'Avaux, who had, on an embassy to Venice, settled 
a difficult question about Mantua, that he had 
secured a truce between Poland and Sweden, that 
he had negotiated a treaty at Hamburg, which 
prepared the way for the Peace of Westphalia, and 
that he was a man of large skill and experience; 
also by Servien, the Count de la Roche des Aubiers, 
who had been Secretary of State under Richelieu, 
had seen diplomatic service, and had by his brilliancy 
become a favorite of Mazarin, and finally by the 
renowned Due de Longueville. He could see that 
Sweden had sent to the congress the son of the great 
Chancellor Oxenstiern, a man of large learning and 
capacity, and Salvius, who had won the favor of 
his Queen Christina. He would learn that the Empire 
had in Dr. Volmar and Count Trautsmandorf envoys 

[226] 



RECOGNITION OF DIPLOMATISTS 

who were in ability and good sense peers of any in 
that great assembly, and that Venice was represented 
by Contarini, who had rendered conspicuous public 
services at the principal courts of Europe, and that 
the mediator sent by the Pope was Fabio Chigi, 
afterwards raised to the Holy See by the title of 
Alexander VII, and that he was one of the shrewdest 
and most experienced diplomatists present. Not to 
mention any of the one hundred and forty others 
whose names are given by Garden, surely these 
dominant men, who shaped the great settlement 
from which in an emphatic sense what we call modern 
Europe may be said to date its life, might well have 
their names recalled and their work recognized 
as theirs by any historian of the seventeenth 
century. 

If we pause to notice the three principal treaties of 
the reign of Louis XIV, those of Nimeguen, Ryswick, 
and Utrecht, we shall find a very slight treatment 
of them in several histories of repute. From Dyer 
and Russell and Crowe the reader will learn little 
or nothing. Green's larger work on England has 
the briefest possible notice of these treaties. Even 
Philipson in his volume on the Age of Louis XIV, 
forming a part of Oncken's great Historical Series, 
while giving the results of the treaties, says hardly 
anything of the men who negotiated them. Martin 
gives some of the names, but not all, and does not 
dwell on the merits of the men he does name. Lecky 
says he omits any detailed account of the Treaty of 

[227 1 



SELECTED ADDRESSE 



Utrecht because it is fully described elsewhere, as, 
in fact, it is in Stanhope's Queen Anne. Hume is 
reasonably full on the negotiations at Nimeguen, 
Macaulay on Ryswick, and Capefigue on both. 
In general the French historians as a class have given 
more attention to diplomatic history than either the 
Germans or the English. 

When we remember that in the making of the 
treaties referred to such men as Colbert-Croisse, 
Cailleres, De Harlay and Polignac of France, and Sir 
William Temple and Hyde and Sir Leoline Jenkins 
of England, and Van Bevening of the Nether- 
lands were engaged, may we not fairly ask whether 
some special attention might not have been given to 
them by the historians of their period .^^ 

With the single exception of the great Treaty of 
Vienna of 1815, we shall find the case much the same 
in more recent European history. The names of 
any of the negotiators of the Treaty of Paris of 1856, 
which summed up the results of the Crimean war 
and introduced perhaps the most important changes 
in maritime affairs ever made by a single treaty, are 
not so much as mentioned in Justin McCarthy's 
interesting History of our Time. 

It is but just to say that the American historians, 
especially Hildreth and Bancroft, have set a better 
example in writing of the treaties made by the 
United States in the period covered by their works. 
But the authors of our school manuals of American 
history give the children little or no information 

[228] 



RECOGNITION OF DIPLOMATISTS 

concerning the diplomatic labors of the men who, by 
their skill, helped win in Europe those victories in 
the council chamber which were as influential in 
securing our independence as the battles of Saratoga 
and Yorktown. 

If we cannot justify the neglect of many historians 
to treat with suflicient fulness the work of diploma- 
tists, we can perceive some of the causes of that 
neglect. That work does not appeal to the im- 
agination and excite the passions of men like the 
battles of the warrior. The processes by which it is 
accomplished are often, perhaps generally, guarded 
by governments with more or less secrecy. Even 
when the French and Spanish ambassadors used to 
make their entry into a capital with great display, 
their discussions in a congress and their despatches 
were not given to the public. Flassan (I, 37) well 
says, "The lot of negotiators is less favorable for 
celebrity than that of generals. Their works are 
often buried; if recent, they cannot be made public; 
if they have become a little old, they lack interest, 
unless the pen which has traced them has such a 
superior style that we can regard them as models 
of logic and of human wisdom." 

But if the reader is more dazzled by the descrip- 
tion of battles than of even the most important 
negotiations, is it not the duty of the historian to 
correct his bad taste or to disregard it by setting 
forth in due proportions what is really important, 
and by giving to great negotiators the credit which 

[229] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



is really their due for promoting the interests of 
their country and of humanity? 

While general histories should give more attention 
to the important features in diplomatic work, it 
seems desirable that the diplomatic history of each 
nation should be written by some one of its own 
citizens. It is due to each nation that its diplomatic 
relations be set forth in such a special work in more 
detail than the general historian can properly resort 
to in his narrative. The custodians of the archives 
can give more liberty to one of their fellow-citizens 
in examining papers than they sometimes are free 
to grant to foreigners. But more liberality in the 
use of documents, and at the same time more care 
in preserving them, may well be exercised by 
governments. 

So impartial an editor as De Martens complains 
in the preface to his Nouveau Recueil de Traites that 
he has been unable to procure many important 
documents which he needed, because they had 
not been published or because governments were 
unwilling to communicate them to him. 

In some countries, notably in England, a large 
part of the most valuable material for diplomatic 
history is carried off by the foreign secretaries as 
they leave office. This material consists of the 
confidential letters from the ministers who are rep- 
resenting the country abroad. These letters are 
regarded in Great Britain as the private property 
of the foreign secretary. They contain often more 

[230] 



RECOGNITION OF DIPLOMATISTS 

valuable information than the formal despatches. 
Being carried away, they are sometimes lost. Some- 
times they appear in the publication of family papers 
of the secretaries, divorced from the documents 
which should explain or modify them. It may be a 
question whether in that country and in ours some 
provision should not be made for preserving in the 
archives even these personal letters to the secretaries, 
or such parts of them as concern public business, 
so that the Government may have all the facts within 
reach and may permit them to be used by the 
historian when the proper time comes for a full 
diplomatic history. 

Several nations have published or have permitted 
the publication of their treaties. In addition to 
Barbeyrac's Collection of Ancient Treaties and the 
vast Corps Diplomatique Universel of Dumont, 
we have the Acta Foedera Publica of Rymer, the 
Regesta Diplomatica of Georgisch, the Codex Italiae 
Diplomaticus of Lunig, the collections of Abreu for 
Spain, the Codex Diplomaticus of Leibnitz, the great 
Recueils of Modern Treaties by De Martens and 
his successors, the British Treaties of Hertslet, the 
Collection of the United States, the South American 
Treaties, edited by Calvo, and other collections. 
We have also Koch and Schoell's History of Treaties. 
But of diplomatic histories, which give us full 
accounts of the origin and details and results of 
negotiations, and make known to us the person- 
ality and the influence and merits of the men who 

[231] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



conducted them, and enable us to understand the 
living forces which accomplished the results attained, 
of these we have but few. The French, with the 
renowned works of Flassan and Garden and Lef ebvre, 
have outstripped all other nations. 

Flassan, in speaking of such works as the Histoire 
des Traites by St. Preux, Mably's Du PubHc de 
TEurope, and Koch's Abrege des Traites, well says : 
"In speaking of events they have said nothing of 
persons, although these lend great interest to a 
diplomatic work. It is not sufficient to give the 
principal articles of a treaty of peace and to add a 
sketch of the events which have preceded it. One 
should as far as possible make us acquainted with 
the negotiator, indicate the forces brought into play 
on either side, the principal debates in the confer- 
ences, the obstacles overcome, and sum up in im- 
partial conclusions the results of the treaty or of the 
action of the cabinet which they are discussing." 

Mr. Trescot in his two little volumes on the earlier 
chapters in our diplomatic history; Mr. Lyman in 
his more extensive work; Mr. Schuyler in his mono- 
graph on certain chapters in our history; the former 
president of the American Historical Association, 
Mr. John Jay, in his chapter in Winsor's History on 
the Negotiation of the Treaty of Independence, and 
Mr. Henry Adams in his Administrations of Jefferson 
and Madison, have well supplemented Hildreth and 
Bancroft, and Mr. Rhodes in his recent work has 
given long-neglected recognition to the services of 

[232 1 



RECOGNITION OF DIPLOMATISTS 

Secretary Marcy. But a full and connected history 
of American diplomacy, in the light of present knowl- 
edge, is still a desideratum. 

It has seemed to me eminently appropriate to 
discuss this theme now in this age of arbitration, and 
here where the world is holding its great industrial 
congress of peace. It is meet that we should empha- 
size the importance of pacific negotiations as the 
desirable method of settling international difficulties 
by giving the deserved place to the histories of diplo- 
matic labors and by asking that historians should 
place on the heads of great diplomatists the laurels 
which they merit, and of which they have too long 
been robbed, and should give them as honorable a 
position upon their pages as they assign to great 
admirals and great captains. Let history do what 
she can to perpetuate the fraternal relations of 
nations by glorifying the council chamber and the 
arbitrator at least as much as the field of battle and 
the warrior. 



[233] 



IX 

THE EUROPEAN CONCERT 

AND THE 

MONROE DOCTRINE 



JUNE 28, 1905 

A DISCOURSE BEFORE THE 
PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 



IX 



THE EUROPEAN CONCERT AND THE 
MONROE DOCTRINE 

OEVEN years ago on pleasant June days like this 
I had occasion frequently to take the charming sail 
between Therapia, the attractive summer residence 
of the European ambassadors to the Ottoman 
Empire, and Pera in Constantinople. Often I met 
on the Bosphorus the representatives of the so-called 
Six Great Powers in their launches on their way to 
the palace of Tophane. There they spent a good 
part of the summer, not altogether to their enjoy- 
ment, as they complained, endeavoring to settle the 
questions which the war of the preceding year had 
left for adjustment between Greece and the Ottoman 
Empire, and especially to determine the disposition 
to be made of Crete. So long were they baffled in 
their efforts to reach a solution of the problems which 
their governments had committed to them that the 
diplomatic wags from the smaller States suggested 
that the Grandes Puissances, as the leading Powers 
styled themselves, might better be called the Grandes 
Impuissances. But what impressed an observer 
trained in his studies of international law to believe 
that in respect to independence and equality all 
States, small as Well as great, have equal rights, 
was the obvious fact that in the deliberations at 

[237 1 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



Tophane so little attention was paid to the wishes 
of either Greece or Turkey. The question ever 
before the ambassadors was simply what settlement 
was best for Europe, or best for the interests of their 
respective States. All questions of indemnity, of 
boundary, of administration were considered not 
with regard to the desires of the belligerent nations, 
but with regard to the quiet, order, and peace of 
Europe, which it did not suit the convenience of 
Europe to have disturbed at that time. 

This close view of the European Concert in action 
naturally started numerous inquiries in the mind of 
an American observer, among them the following: 

Wliat is the origin of the European Concert? 

Is the influence of its action beneficent? 

Is its policy just? 

Has it made inroads on those ancient postulates 
of international law, the independence and the 
equality of States? 

Does its existence have any bearing, present or 
prospective, on American affairs? 

I trust that a modest attempt to consider these 
questions briefly may not be deemed unworthy of 
this high festival which annually gathers so many 
scholars who are accustomed to study the stately 
march of nations and to hail with delight any 
approach to that glad consummation when peoples 
shall secure the triumph of justice and peace by 
co-operation and arbitration rather than waste 
treasure and life in mortal combat with each other. 

[238] 



EUROPE AND MONROE DOCTRINE 

The first official use of this term, the European 
Concert, seems to be in the seventh article of the 
Treaty of Paris of 1856, which summed up the results 
of the Crimean War. That article binds the con- 
tracting Powers to respect the territorial integrity 
of the Ottoman Empire and to regard every act 
opposing this as a matter of general interest. That 
was a natural outcome of that war. 

But the germ of the fundamental idea of the Euro- 
pean Concert is found to antedate the Treaty of 
Paris by a long period. The principle underlying 
it is discernible in the system of political equilibrium 
of the Italian States in the fifteenth century, and 
still more clearly in the important adjustments by 
the continental Powers in the Peace of Westphalia. 
The great colonial and commercial rivalries of the 
sixteenth century lifted the minds of statesmen 
above the idea of personal conflicts of ambitious 
sovereigns like Francis I and Charles V to the con- 
ception of European interests which needed to be 
harmonized in such manner as to secure repose and 
peace to all. This spirit breathes through the epoch- 
making Treaty of Utrecht by which nearly a dozen 
States composed their differences for a time. I need 
hardly say that the striking illustration of the Euro- 
pean Concert was found in the Holy Alliance which 
the audacious aggressions of Napoleon forced Great 
Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Russia to form. The 
odium which the Alliance afterwards brought upon 
itself by its unwarranted interference with the 

[239] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



internal policy of other States, European and Amer- 
ican, interference even with legitimate aspirations 
for freedom, has doubtless often blinded men to its 
merits in saving Europe from the domination of the 
French conqueror. Its faults were many and griev- 
ous. But it kept alive the idea of Europe as a whole, 
with its rights and legitimate interests, which in the 
name of humanity it ought to protect against the 
assumptions and aggressions of any one State. 

In 1831 Great Britain, Austria, Russia, and Prussia, 
in conference at London, having under consideration 
the status of the newly created kingdom of Belgium, 
declared that while each nation has its own rights, yet 
Europe has also its rights, given to it by the social 
order, and these rights the conference must defend. 

In 1841 the Pentarchy, comprising the four great 
States above named and France, considering the 
Turkish questions, affirmed that the preservation 
of general peace was the constant object of their 
solicitude and that the affairs of the Ottoman Empire 
must be adjusted in the interest of Europe, and so 
they have been theoretically at least, however im- 
perfectly, in practice. It was on that ground that 
the Treaty of San Stefano, by which Russia sought 
to garner the fruits of her victory over the Turks, 
was revised by the Great Powers in the Treaty of 
Berlin in 1878. 

The congress of Paris in 1856 revised and amended 
the maritime law of Europe in the interest of the 
peace and prosperity of the whole continent. 

[240] 



EUROPE AND MONROE DOCTRINE 

It was primarily to promote the welfare of Europe 
that the Hague Conference was called, though its 
scope was made wide enough to sweep us within 
the range of its beneficent influence. 

Though the European Concert has not been 
strong enough to prevent within the last half -century 
several wars between Great Powers, as for instance 
between France and Italy, between Italy and Austria, 
between Prussia and Austria, between Germany and 
France, between Russia and Turkey, yet it has exerted 
an appreciable influence in favor of European peace 
and has dominated to a large extent the policy of 
the smaller States. Under the recognized doctrines 
of intervention and the balance of power, large inva- 
sions of the old doctrines of independence and 
equality have been made and justified until what Dr. 
Lawrence well calls the Primacy of the Great Powers 
seems to be substantially established. 

The present kingdom of Greece was not only 
called into being by them, but in all its chequered 
history from 1832 down to its foolish war with 
Turkey in 1896 it has been largely controlled by 
them. The existence of Belgium and the neutraliza- 
tion of its territory and of that of Switzerland and 
of that of Luxemburg are of course due to the action 
of the Great Powers. The Eastern question in its 
manifold forms, affecting Turkey and the Balkan 
States in all their frictions and disorders, is ever 
busying the cabinets of the great States. The new 
kingdom of Italy was received by them into their 

[241] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



brotherhood in 1867. They have drawn no constitu- 
tion to define the powers which they will exercise. 
But in many things they speak for Europe and their 
wishes are commands which the lesser Powers find 
it wise and even necessary to obey. The Concert 
of Europe is a political fact, which cannot be 
ignored. 

Has its influence been beneficent .^^ Has its exist- 
ence been a good fortune to Europe .^^ On the whole, 
yes. It has tended to keep before the nations the 
broad view of the peace and welfare of Europe as an 
end more desirable than the triumph of any one 
State. If it has sometimes cramped the autonomy 
and liberty of a small State, on the other hand it 
has often prevented the absorption of the small State 
by some greedy and tyrannical neighbor. Greece 
hampered in the aspirations of her restless and 
excitable people is more prosperous and happy than 
she would be under Turkish rule from which the 
Concert delivered her and now protects her. Bel- 
gium, relatively insignificant, but neutralized, is 
far more fortunate than she was as the cockpit of 
Europe. Perhaps the greatest failure of the Concert 
is in the Ottoman Empire and the Balkan States. 
But it must be admitted that the problem there is 
one of extreme diflSculty. W ith all the defects and 
all the abuses which can be charged up against the 
Concert, so signal have been its benefits that the 
distinguished French statesman and author, Hano- 
taux, said in a speech to the French Chamber that 

[242] 



EUROPE AND MONROE DOCTRINE 

the Concert is "the only tribunal and the only 
authority to which all can and should bow." 

If it infringes on the independence and equality of 
States, even of the smallest, can its existence and 
action be justified? I suppose few will go so far 
as the learned Edinburgh professor, Lorimer, and 
declare that the equality of States and absolute 
independence may be safely said to have been re- 
pudiated by history as always by reason. On the 
contrary most of us will hold that some sufficient 
reason must be given for disregarding in any degree 
the old postulate that any State is entitled to have 
its independence and equality of rights respected by 
other States, however many or powerful. Is there 
any good ground for the poHcy of the European 
Concert.'^ I think that question should be answered, 
under certain reservations, in the affirmative. 

Must it not be conceded that the Great Powers 
justly assume a certain solidarity of interest, cer- 
tainly so far as preventing European wars is sought? 
Is there not solid moral ground for esteeming the 
collective good of Europe as of more value than the 
advantage of any one State, especially if it is a 
relatively unimportant State? May not the Great 
Powers, if they see a small Power pursuing a policy 
dangerous to the general peace of all or of several, 
justly intervene to prevent it, as any government 
checks the violence of one of its own citizens? 
Indeed the right of intervention by one State in the 
affairs of another in order to secure its own safety 

[243] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



is freely recognized. If the order and well-being 
of several States are menaced by the capricious action 
or even by the independence of one State, does not 
the right of intervention and regulation by still 
stronger reason inhere in them? If we may properly 
assume a certain solidarity or community of interest 
in Europe, do not the best interests of all the States 
limit the public action of any one State through 
regard for the general good? It was only on this 
principle that the Congress of Berlin could assume 
to call Russia to account for the Treaty of San 
Stefano. Of course the intervening Powers, however 
strong or numerous, can be justified in intervention 
only in case their motives and their acts can be 
defended at the bar of reason. Many interventions 
have been wrong and deserve condemnation. But 
on the other hand is it not plain that certain inter- 
ventions have been beneficial and so commendable? 
Even so conservative a writer as that high English 
authority, Mr. W. E. Hall, says "A somewhat wider 
range of intervention than that which is possessed 
by individual States may perhaps be conceded to the 
body of States, or to some of them acting for the 
whole in good faith with sufficient warrant. In 
the general interests of Europe, for example, an end 
might be put to a civil war by the compulsory separa- 
tion of the parties to it, or a particular family or a 
particular form of government might be established 
and maintained in a country, if the interests to be 
guarded were strictly international, and if the main- 

[244] 



EUROPE AND MONROE DOCTRINE 

tenance of the state of things set up were a reasonable 
way of attaining the required object. 

"Certainly there must always be a likelihood that 
powers with divergent individual interests, acting 
in common, will prefer the general good to the selfish 
objects of a particular State. It is not improbable 
that this good may be better secured by their actions 
than by free scope being given to natural forces. 
In one or two instances, as, for example, in that 
of the formation of Belgium, and in the recent 
one of the arrangements made by the Congress of 
Berlin, and of the minor interventions springing out 
of it, settlements have been arrived at, or collisions 
have been postponed, when without common action 
an era of disturbance might have been indefinitely 
prolonged and its effects indefinitely extended. 
There is fair reason consequently for hoping that 
intervention by, or under the sanction of, the body 
of States on grounds forbidden to single States 
may be useful and even beneficent. Still, from the 
point of view of law, it is always to be remembered 
that States so intervening are going beyond their 
legal powers. Their excuse or their justification 
can only be a moral one." 

I venture to ask in respect to the last two sentences 
I have quoted from Mr. Hall whether if the acts of 
intervention under consideration in any given case 
have an excuse or justification which is a moral one, 
the States performing them can be going beyond their 
legal powers, provided by the phrase "legal powers" 

[245] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



we mean powers allowable under international law. 
For how do we determine what powers are thus 
allowable except by finding the moral sense of nations 
as expressed in their usages? And the moral sense 
of Europe appears plainly to be that the Great 
Powers may infringe upon the independence and 
equality of the minor states, if such infringement is 
essential to the preservation of the general good. 
If such infringement is justifiable on moral grounds, 
is it not by that fact to be regarded as justifiable 
in international law? 

Professor Westlake of Cambridge in his Chapters 
on the Principles of International Law points out 
that many States are permanently in a state of polit- 
ical inferiority to others and yet declares that their 
legal equality is not infringed thereby. He shows 
how the Congress of Berlin changed the boundaries 
of Servia, Roumania, and Montenegro, although 
those states had no seats in the Congress and affirms 
that this shows how political inequality is compatible 
in the European system with legal equality. The 
validity of these assertions depends on the definition 
of the term "legal equality." But surely the inde- 
pendence and equality recognized as the fundamental 
postulates of international law are wanting in these 
cases. Whatever significance may be attached to 
the words "legal equality," it is clear that eminent 
European publicists approve of the European Con- 
cert and are hopeful of ultimate beneficent results 
from its action. Professor Westlake himself says, 

[246] 



EUROPE AND MONROE DOCTRINE 

"the fact is not one to be condemned. It may prove 
to be a step towards the establishment of a European 
government, and in no society can peace and order 
be permanently enjoyed without a government." 

Rolin Jacquemyns, who has contributed so much 
to the European discussions of grave questions in 
international law, says of the Concert, "However 
weak and contradictory the action of this syndicate 
has shown itself to be in recent times, we must none 
the less respect in it the germ of an institution which 
may at some time by its organization and develop- 
ment become extremely useful to the progress of 
international law." 

The best public opinion in Europe is recognizing 
and emphasizing the fact that Great Powers which 
have great strength and influence have not only 
the right, but have also the obligation to use that 
strength and influence for the triumph of justice and 
the promotion of peace in all their international rela- 
tions. If wars come, they shall come mitigated by 
such humane regulations as the Hague Conference 
can devise. The collective interests of Europe 
shall be paramount in importance to the interests 
of a particular State. The political power of the 
great States must needs be superior to that of the 
minor States, but the internal or external contro- 
versies of the latter must not be allowed to endanger 
the quiet and prosperity of the continent. No 
doubt the Concert will sometimes be unjust or unwise 
in the future as it has been in the past, and will 

[ 247 ] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



deserve and receive condemnation. But in many 
emergencies it will be of service in the future as it 
has been in the past. That it exists as a great 
Force cannot be denied. That it is likely to be a 
greater Force in days to come can hardly be doubted. 
It bids fair to be a sort of permanent intellectual 
executive. It has so many variable factors that 
there is danger of a lack of stability and of the 
highest moral aims. No doubt there is the risk 
that the smaller States may in days of stress be cut 
up into small change to settle the debts of the larger 
States to each other. But with all its defects, present 
and prospective, it seems to be carrying Europe as 
far as any arrangement ever made towards that 
great continental confederation of which dreamers 
have dreamed and poets have sung, but which has 
not yet come down out of the skies to put an end 
to wrangling and injustice and war. By its fruits 
it must be judged. 

In view of the Concert of the Great Powers of 
Europe for the control of the affairs of their continent, 
and of their marked exercise of power over the smaller 
States, have they any cause to complain of our policy 
in attempting to prevent unjust encroachments by 
any of them on the territory of the weaker American 
States.^ By virtue of our pre-eminence in strength 
and in political success we have undertaken by our 
Monroe Doctrine to protect the States to the south 
of us from unwarrantable interference. We have 
done this without selfish greed for territory. We 

[248 1 



EUROPE AND MONROE DOCTRINE 

have doubtless preserved to some of the States 
territory which but for us would have been lost to 
them. We have not deprived them of legal rights. 
If we have limited the foreign relations of Cuba, it is 
to preserve her independence and to prevent our 
complications with European Powers. We have 
sought to promote the highest interests of the whole 
continent. We have frankly proclaimed from the 
outset that one of our motives was to save ourselves 
from such entanglements and conflicts with European 
Powers as would threaten us if there was not a limit 
set to the encroachments of foreign states on the 
territory of either North or South America. But 
nowhere have we trenched upon the sovereign rights 
of smaller States as the European Concert has many 
times done. I am aware that some of our own 
citizens have charged that in the Panama affair 
we have in the treatment of Colombia followed 
unworthy examples set by the Great Powers. I do 
not so read the history of the separation of Panama 
from Colombia and our recognition of the new State. 
But granting for the moment the most unfavorable 
interpretation of our policy, certainly Europe cannot 
complain, as indeed she has not complained. The 
Great Powers speedily approved of our action. 
And every one must admit that by the contemplated 
construction of the Panama canal we are conferring 
an immeasurable benefit upon the world, including 
Colombia and Panama. WTiile recognizing to the 
full whatever blessing the Concert of the Great 

[249] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



Powers has brought to Europe, we may boldly 
challenge foreign critics of our Monroe Doctrine 
to show us any so generous act of the European 
Concert as our liberation of Cuba and our guarantee 
to her of her autonomy in the face of all the chorus 
of predictions from beyond the sea that we should 
never have the magnanimity to live up to our prom- 
ises. One of the most fertile islands in the world, 
by her situation of the highest strategic importance 
to us, under Spanish rule a constant menace to our 
peace, we could have easily found a thousand 
European precedents for annexing her territory, but 
the world knows that she has an assurance as firm 
as that of Canada that she will not be absorbed by 
the Union until she sues for admission. 

It has of late become the fashion in some quarters 
to speak in derogatory terms of the Monroe Doctrine. 
No doubt the various interpretations put upon it in 
the changing exigencies of our history are puzzling 
to one who attempts to define it in terms covering 
its various applications. No doubt the strain put 
upon it by the political vicissitudes of states like 
Venezuela and San Domingo is often perplexing to 
our government. But standing here on ground 
made sacred by the presence, the life, the teachings 
of that great Harvard statesman, John Quincy 
Adams, to whose matchless courage and far-sighted 
wisdom we owe the declaration which we call the 
Monroe Doctrine, but which might more justly be 
called the Adams Doctrine, I for one cannot under- 

[250] 



EUROPE AND MONROE DOCTRINE 

stand how any American citizen, and especially how 
any Massachusetts man, can recall except with a 
thrill of gratitude and admiration that the brave 
Secretary of State was able to inspire the slow-moving 
and lethargic President to fling out the challenge of 
1823 into the face of the Allied Sovereigns of con- 
tinental Europe. James Monroe held the trumpet, 
but John Quincy Adams blew the blast. The notes 
iiave never died upon the air. They were heard in 
full force when another Massachusetts man, Richard 
Olney, sat in the chair of Secretary of State. Nor 
are they likely to die so long as Harvard successors 
to John Quincy Adams hold the executive chair. 

We are told that the Republics of South and 
Central America are sometimes sensitive because 
we have by ourselves assumed this protective attitude 
towards them. It is easy to see how this is possible. 
It implies a certain dependence which is wounding 
to national pride, though in case of urgent need, as in 
the boundary controversy between Venezuela and 
Great Britain, our aid was by no means spurned. 

The development of the European Concert suggests 
the question whether ultimately, perhaps in a future 
somewhat remote, the larger states south of us and 
Canada, if she becomes entirely independent, might 
join us in some kind of a friendly American concert 
to promote general continental interests and to prevent 
foreign intrusion. Is it not conceivable that Mexico, 
Brazil, the Argentine Republic, and Chili might 
reach a development that would make this possible? 

[251] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



Who can say that in a similar manner China and 
Japan may not make an Eastern Asiatic concert 
which shall work out policies mutually beneficial 
to their common interests and also useful to mankind? 
In so doing they would be following the excellent 
advice given them by General Grant in his visit to 
them. In my judgment nothing in his career was 
more creditable to his intelligence and his humane 
spirit than the counsels he gave to Prince Kung 
and Li Hung Chang on the one hand and to the 
Emperor of Japan on the other to the effect that 
China and Japan should cultivate friendly relations 
with each other and avoid contracting large debts 
to Europe. His wise act deserves to be better 
known and more justly appreciated in this country. 
It was prompted by the same spirit which has led 
our recent administrations to take such signal steps 
in preserving the integrity of China and in bringing 
to an end the war which has been ravaging the far 
East. 

If Great Britain holding India, and Russia holding 
Central and Northwestern Asia, could come to some 
harmonious understanding as to their Asiatic schemes 
what a blessing it would be to them and to their 
Asiatic subjects. Africa for the present must 
apparently fall under the European system. 

It may not be possible, perhaps it is not desirable, 
that the European Concert should be developed into 
a constitutional organization like that imagined 
by the Abbe de St. Pierre or by Kant in his scheme 

[ 252 ] 



EUROPE AND MONROE DOCTRINE 

for a Perpetual Peace, lofty as were their aspirations 
and beautiful as were their dreams. But if by 
spontaneous action the Great Powers are ready to 
act together, even in partial control of the minor 
Powers, so as to secure with justice the peace and 
welfare of Europe and to discuss in a friendly spirit 
in repeated sessions of the Hague Conference the 
principles which should govern international rela- 
tions, may they not well be pardoned for exercising 
a sort of primacy over the minor states on their 
continent? Every step is welcome which helps the 
w^orld substitute deliberation and arbitration for 
war and secures us the attainment of the general 
good rather than the advantage of any one State, 
great or small. So it behooves us in the exercise 
of the primacy, which we have for certain purposes 
claimed and exercised on the American continent, 
to consider the welfare of all the States concerned 
as well as our own if we are to command the respect 
and the assent of the world. Adhering to the 
Monroe Doctrine in this lofty spirit, we may rest 
assured that our right to do so will not be questioned 
by any of the members of the European Concert. 
Even at some inconvenience w^e will continue to 
discharge the high duty to which Providence seems 
to have called us to shield the territory of America 
from European intrusion. By such a policy we shall 
protect them and protect ourselves from the perils 
against which the prescience of John Quincy Adams 
sought to guard us in the early years of the Republic, 

[253] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



and which, but for our maintenance of that policy, 
would be as menacing now as he deemed them in 
his day. 

I know we are told that there is no longer any 
danger of an attempt by European states to carve up 
and gain possession of American territory. How 
one who sees what has just been going on in China can 
hold such a view it is difficult to understand. Not 
in the colonization frenzy of the sixteenth century 
was there a more voracious greed for the acquisition 
of foreign territory for the purpose of developing 
and controlling trade. See how Russia pounced on 
Manchuria with its seven hundred thousand square 
miles and vast resources, how Great Britain then 
planted her foot upon Wei-hai-wei, ever keeping her 
eyes on the immense Yangtse Valley, to be appro- 
priated in case of a general division of China, how 
Germany on the slimsiest pretexts got practical 
control of the rich province of Shantung with its 
thirty millions of inhabitants, and how France was 
watching the game with its hands ready to fall on 
the province of Yunnan and so much of Szechuen 
as could be secured, and all this to gain new and 
large markets for their products. What ground is 
there to believe that if we withdrew our objections 
we should not see a similar scramble for all the terri- 
tory south of us from the Rio Grande to Cape Horn, 
and how easily would excuses be found for conquest 
in such controversies as have already arisen between 
European Powers and the Spanish-American States? 

[254] 



EUROPE AND MONROE DOCTRINE 

Some do maintain that there is no objection to this, 
and that indeed it would be better for all that the 
territory south of us should be divided among strong 
European Powers. Such men may logically discard 
the Monroe Doctrine. But those who hold the 
opinions of Jefferson and Madison and John Quincy 
Adams, those who feel the thrill of delight which we 
aril r felt when Mr. Seward served notice on Louis 
Napoleon to decamp with all his baggage without 
delay from Mexico as Sheridan's forces moved into 
Texas, those who believe that it is best for us, best 
for all, that America should be kept for Americans 
and governed by Americans will ever sustain our 
government in insisting that the European States, 
whatever conquests or spoliations they make in 
Asia and Africa, shall make no more on our side of 
the Atlantic. 



[^55 



PRESENT PROBLEMS IN THE 

RELATIONS OF MISSIONS 

TO GOVERNMENTS 



APRIL 25, 1900 
READ AT (ECUMENICAL COUNCIL, NEW YORK 



PRESENT PROBLEMS IN THE RELATIONS 
OF MISSIONS TO GOVERNMENTS 

1 HE problems in the relations of missions to 
governments may all be brought under two classes: 

1. Those involved in determining the rights and 
privileges of missionaries in foreign lands; 

2. Those involved in determining the duties of 
governments in protecting missionaries and the 
property of missionary societies. 

It will aid us in solving the problems in the first 
class if we clearly affirm at the outset that the rights 
and privileges of missionaries in foreign lands are 
to be determined by exactly the same principles 
that determine the rights and privileges of other 
citizens of their country. Those principles are such 
as are given by treaties between their own govern- 
ment and the government of the land in which they 
are at work, or by general international usage. 

It has sometimes been alleged that missionaries 
and their friends claim for them exceptional rights 
and privileges above those of their fellow-citizens. 
I am not aware of any ground for this charge. 
Certainly they have no legal justification for such a 
claim, except as treaties or usage make discrimina- 
tions in their favor. An illustration of such dis- 

[259] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



crimination is found in the admission, free of duty, 
into the Ottoman Empire of the articles needed in 
the prosecution of their work. This is a very ancient 
concession made by the Ottoman Government, and 
the missionaries of all lands have a perfect right to 
avail themselves of it. 

Some critics of missions seem to claim that mis- 
sionaries are not entitled to the same treatment 
by foreign Powers as men engaged in mercantile 
pursuits. The tone of their criticisms indicates 
that in their opinion a man engaged in any trade, 
even in selling spirituous liquors in a Mohammedan 
country, may, if interfered with, properly invoke 
the assistance of his government in securing for him 
the privilege of carrying on that business, while a 
missionary, who is attempting to teach the Gospel 
or heal the sick without charge, if he is interfered 
with contrary to treaties, may not properly invoke 
such aid. 

Now we are surely on solid ground in affirming 
with the utmost confidence that missionaries have 
the same legal right to reside, travel, trade, teach, 
heal, transact their legitimate business in a foreign 
country as any of their fellow-citizens have to follow 
their chosen pursuits there, unless by international 
stipulation some limitations are imposed upon them 
in respect to the work they propose to do. That 
distinguished Attorney-General of the United States, 
Caleb Gushing, gave it as his official opinion that 
where it is declared in the Fourth Article of our 

[260] 



MISSIONS TO GOVERNMENTS 

Treaty with Turkey that "citizens of the United 
States of America, quietly pursuing their commerce 
. . . shall not be molested," the word "commerce" 
means "any subject or object of intercourse what- 
ever." (7 Op. Att y Gen. 567.) In the eye of the law 
missionaries are in a foreign land, primarily, in most 
cases, merely as citizens . They do not and cannot lose 
their citizenship by being missionaries. They are 
not divested of a single iota of their rights and 
privileges as citizens by their special calling. It is 
therefore an injustice and an impertinence for critics 
or for foreign Powers to discriminate against them 
in defining their rights and privileges as citizens. 

Furthermore, in some countries, as for example 
in China, missionaries have the liberty guaranteed 
to them in specific terms to teach the doctrines 
of the Christian faith. The Twenty-ninth Article 
of our Treaty of 1858 with China permits our 
Christian citizens or their Chinese converts to teach 
as well as to practise the principles of Christianity 
in the Empire. It reads thus: "The principles of 
the Christian religion as professed by the Protestant 
and Roman Catholic Churches are recognized as 
teaching men to do good, and to do to others as 
they would have others do to them. Hereafter 
those w^ho quietly profess and teach these doctrines 
shall not be harassed or persecuted on account of 
their faith. Any person, whether citizen of the 
United States or Chinese convert, who, according 
to these tenets, peaceably teaches and practises the 

[261] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



principles of Christianity, shall in no case be inter- 
fered with or molested." The right and privilege of 
doing this appropriate work of the missionaries are 
thus secured to our citizens under the same sanctions 
as the liberty of trade in certain ports. Therefore 
the missionary who claims the right to teach the 
Gospel there is no more presuming or obtrusive, so 
far as the matter of legal rights is concerned, than 
the merchant who offers petroleum or flour for sale. 

So in the Ottoman Empire by the usage of cen- 
turies, and specifically by the so-called Capitulations 
of 1535 with France and later Capitulations with 
other Powers, and by the provisions of the Treaties 
of Paris, 1856, and Berlin, 1878, the missionaries 
have indisputable rights to maintain their hospitals, 
schools and chapels, subject to reasonable provisions 
of local law. There is no ground for the charge, 
sometimes recklessly made by those who are ignorant 
of the legal relations of ecclesiastical bodies in 
Turkey to the Government, that missionaries are 
lawless intruders in the Ottoman Empire. They 
are there carrying on their work by as unquestionable 
a legal right as any foreign merchant or banker in 
Constantinople. 

But while declaring these rights and privileges of 
the missionaries, we must recognize that they are 
to be enjoyed, like all rights and privileges of men 
in society, under certain limitations. And so far as 
I know, missionaries and mission boards recognize 
these limitations. Let us notice two of them.' 

[262] 



MISSIONS TO GOVERNMENTS 

1. Missionaries in a foreign land have no right 
under color of teaching religion to assail the lawful 
authority of the Government or to encourage sub- 
jects to be rebellious, disloyal, or disobedient to law. 
They are not, for example, to lead their disciples to 
avoid the payment of taxes or the discharge of 
military duties. They may believe that the Govern- 
ment is bad and its laws oppressive. But they are 
not in the country to carry on reform or revolution 
in the Government. I think that our American 
missionaries have with great discretion and fidelity 
observed this limitation upon their activities. 

2. In the conduct of their schools and in their 
publications they must conform to the regulations 
fixed by law. If these regulations are in violation 
of the treaties, diplomatic intervention must secure 
the modification of them. In the Ottoman Empire 
our missionaries obey all the laws concerning the 
establishment of their schools, the censorship of 
text-books, the qualifications of teachers. It is fair 
to say that the laws on these subjects are not un- 
reasonable, though sometimes exception is justly 
taken to the manner in which they are executed. 
Sometimes annoying and unwarrantable interference 
with the schools is practised by officials, but the 
Consul or the Minister interposes to stop it. 

I would add that it is the moral duty of the mis- 
sionary, without always claiming all the privileges 
to which he is by law entitled, to avoid giving needless 
offence to the people among whom he resides by 

[263 1 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



disregarding their tastes and prejudices, or even 
their superstitions. For instance, the Chinese con- 
sider that the erection of a church, especially if 
it have a spire, in proximity to the magistrate's 
office, is calculated to bring disaster upon the city. 
A wise missionary will avoid selecting such a site 
for his church, even though he may have bought 
the site and be legally entitled to erect his church 
upon it. I think the American missionaries have 
usually shown courtesy and delicacy and tact in 
accommodating themselves to circumstances so 
as to prevent as far as possible friction with the 
Chinese. 

It is also the duty of the missionary to be patient 
under petty annoyances and by courteous and re- 
spectful approach to the local officials to adjust his 
difficulties, if possible, without invoking the inter- 
vention of Consul or Minister. He thus strengthens 
his position by sparing the local official the humili- 
ation of being called to account by his superior. 
Many of our missionaries have shown great skill 
and aptness in that kind of personal diplomacy. 

But none of these limitations should be inter- 
preted to prevent our missionaries from using their 
good offices either directly with the officials or in- 
directly through diplomatic interposition to relieve 
native converts from requirements and from taxes 
obnoxious to these converts on Christian grounds. 
For instance, in Chinese villages there are at times 
theatrical shows and festivals, which are in the nature 

[264 1 



MISSIONS TO GOVERNMENTS 

of religious offerings to gods, and all the villagers 
are levied on to meet the expenses. Pung Kwang 
Fu, a former Chinese Minister to this country, 
maintained at the Congress of Religions at Chicago 
that the Christian villagers are rightly required to 
join in defraying these expenses. But in 1881 at 
my request the Chinese Government readily issued 
decrees freeing native Protestant converts from this 
burden, which the natives were reluctant on con- 
scientious grounds to bear. The Roman Catholic 
converts had previously been declared exempt from 
these assessments. 

So our missionaries have very justly on many 
occasions petitioned the magistrates against the 
practice by petty officials of annoying and persecut- 
ing native converts. But this is merely an act of 
friendly intervention. 

2. How far should our Government go in securing 
to our missionaries the enjoyment of their rights and 
privileges in the prosecution of their work.^^ This 
is a more difficult question than the first. 

Can we say any less than this — that, in general, 
it is our Government's duty to protect missionaries 
as it protects all other citizens in anything that they 
have a right to do? How can any discrimination 
against them be made.^ They ask for protection 
only as American citizens and only in the enjoyment 
of rights to which they are clearly entitled under 
treaties or the recognized principles of international 
law. And this protection no self-respecting Govern- 

[265 1 



SELECTED ADDRESSE 



ment can refuse them without forfeiting the esteem 
of its citizens and the respect of foreign States. 

It is, in my opinion, not wise for our government 
to interpose, except by respectful request, for the 
protection of native converts against persecution 
and injustice. The French do, under the Capitu- 
lations, take native Roman Catholic converts in 
Turkey under their formal protection. Possibly 
we could make an argument for similar action in 
that country on the same grounds, and in China 
under the Treaty of 1858. But we have generally 
refrained from taking foreigners under our protec- 
tion, though for a time in Turkey we had several 
foreigners enrolled in our legation as proteges of our 
Government. To attempt this carries us on to deli- 
cate ground, and it is better not to make the effort. 

Again I suppose we shall all agree that we should 
not make war upon any nation for the sake of carry- 
ing Christianity into it. I need not pause to argue 
on that point. 

But when missionaries have entered a country 
under treaty stipulations, and all the resources of 
diplomacy have proved unavailing to secure their 
protection, shall a display of force be made to 
protect them? 

Many hesitate or refuse to give an affirmative 
answer to that question. They say first that it is 
incompatible with the spirit of Christianity to use 
force in propagating the Gospel of Peace and Love, 
and secondly, that the display of force is of no 

[266] 



MISSIONS TO GOVERNMENTS 

service and is a sham unless the government is ready 
to follow it with greater force and so to resort to war, 
if protection cannot otherwise be secured for the 
missionaries. 

To which it may be replied, first, that in the case 
supposed force is not used or threatened for propa- 
gating the Gospel, but for protecting the lives and 
property of citizens, whose guaranteed rights as 
citizens are threatened. And if their rights are not 
respected, if their own Government allows them to 
be divested of their rights and makes no effort to 
see that the treaty stipulations are enforced for their 
safety, what assurance will there be for the rights 
of other citizens of their country.^ The Government 
which breaks treaties with respect to missionaries 
and sees that their own Government takes no steps 
to protect them will easily yield to the temptation 
to infringe on the rights of other citizens. Is it 
not possible that because our Government has 
allowed outrages against our missionaries to go on 
since 1883 in Turkey — highway robbery, brutal 
assault, destruction of buildings — without any 
demonstration beyond peaceful and patient argu- 
ment, the Ottoman government is now proceeding in so 
high-handed a manner to prevent by false allegations 
the importation of our flour and our pork? A nation 
which allows one class of its citizens who are of the 
purest character and most unselfish spirit to be 
insulted and outraged with impunity in a foreign 
land must not be surprised if other classes of its 

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SELECTED ADDRESSES 



citizens are also imposed on and wronged in that land, 
wherever selfish interests are invoked against them. 

We are now rejoicing over the prospect of an "open 
door" into China, not only in the sense of that term 
in the correspondence of the Secretary of State, but 
also in the larger sense of freer access for trade to 
all parts of China. We are hoping to build and equip 
railways for that empire. We therefore need abso- 
lute protection for our engineers, mechanics, and 
merchants in the interior of China. Have our 
business men reflected on the probable consequence 
to their agents in China of allowing our missionaries 
to be attacked by mobs.^^ A foreigner is to those 
mobs a foreigner, whatever his occupation, and 
they rarely discriminate between the foreign mer- 
chant and the foreign teacher. If we allow teachers 
to be mobbed with impunity we must expect railway 
builders and merchants to share the same fate. 

The question we are considering is by no means 
so simple as the critics of missions think. Careful 
observation will show that our large mercantile inter- 
ests are likely to be imperilled by our neglect to insist 
on the rights which citizens of any honorable calling 
are entitled to under treaties or international law. 

Secondly, a display of force does not necessarily 
mean war. It is certainly an emphatic mode of 
making a demand. It may at the worst issue only 
in reprisals. It often insures the prompt settlement of 
difficulties which if allowed to drag on and accumulate 
would end in war. Therefore, wisely and opportunely 

[268] 



MISSIONS TO GOVERNMENTS 

made, a proper demonstration in support of a just 
demand may obviate the ultimate necessity of war. 

So far as the missionary interests are concerned 
we could not desire a war to be waged avowedly in 
defence of them alone. Not only would it seem to 
us all out of keeping with the spirit of Christianity, 
but it might destroy all prospect of subsequently 
disseminating Christianity among the people with 
whom we should be at war. If our missionaries 
can remain in a foreign country only on condition 
that we extort from the government of that country 
permission for them to remain by covering them with 
a battery of artillery, then so far as they alone are 
concerned, we might better obey the injunction of 
our Lord to his disciples to shake the dust from their 
feet at the gates of hostile cities and move on. 

But that is not the alternative actually presented 
to us. The two countries in which the missionary 
crises are oftenest acute in our day are the Chinese 
and Ottoman Empires. In neither has the Govern- 
ment undertaken to expel the missionaries. In 
the former it has often failed to suppress lawless 
attacks on them and on their property. In the 
latter, sometimes instigated by mischievous men, 
the officials have often interfered with the labors of 
the missionaries, and the Government has failed to 
pay for property destroyed by its own soldiers in 
time of popular tumult. There is reason to believe 
that in both countries on certain occasions the Gov- 
ernments were not unwilling that some of the offences 

[269] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



named should be committed. In China whatever 
animosity has been shown to the missionaries has 
generally T3een manifested against them as foreigners 
rather than as Christians. In Turkey the animosity, 
so far as it exists, has been chiefly due either to the 
rivalry of other sects or to the fact that largely the 
missionary work is carried on among the Armenians, 
with whom the Turks have of late been so at variance. 

The problem then actually is, not how to prevent 
the expulsion of missionaries, but in two empires 
where they have unquestionable right to labor, how 
to protect them from unlawful annoyance and from 
the destruction of their property. 

The problem is not a simple one for the Govern- 
ment. If it does nothing but register requests 
for justice, injustice may be done, not only to mis- 
sionaries, but also to other citizens. These dilatory 
oriental governments, embarrassed by many difficult 
problems of internal administration, do not willingly 
act except under some pressure. And pressure, 
which is not war, and which will probably not lead 
to war, can be brought to bear by diplomatic and 
naval agencies. 

Our Government was never in so good a condition 
to pursue such a policy. It has a prestige among 
oriental nations before unknown. Its voice, when 
it speaks with an imperative tone, will now be heard. 
The question for it is far larger than a missionary 
question. An influential American citizen, not a 
missionary, has lately written me from an oriental 

[270] 



MISSIONS TO GOVERNMENTS 

country, where our requests have received little 
attention, saying, "If our Government proposes to 
do nothing for American citizens they should say so 
and turn us over to the care of the British embassy.'* 

Such language as that makes one's blood tingle 
and stirs us to ask afresh, not alone as friends of 
missionaries, but as American citizens, what policy 
will our nation adopt to secure the rights of all our 
countrymen of whatever pursuit who are dwelling 
under treaty guarantees in China and Turkej^. 
The friends of missions ask no exceptional favors 
from the Government. They simply seek for such 
protection as their fellow-citizens need. 

It is of course for our Government to say at what 
time and by what methods it shall act. It is some- 
times wise and even necessary for a Government to 
postpone seeking a settlement of difficulties with a 
foreign Power even when it is clear that a settlement 
is highly desirable. Great exigencies may require 
delay. We must allow our authorities to decide 
when and how to proceed. We must exercise the 
patience which patriotism calls for. But we may 
be permitted without impropriety to express our 
desire and our opinion that our Government should 
find some way to make it absolutely clear to oriental 
countries that it intends to secure the protection for 
all our citizens, including missionaries, to which they 
are entitled by treaties and by international law. 



[271] 



XI 
THE TURKISH CAPITULATIONS 



READ BEFORE THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIA- 
TION AT DETROIT, IN DECEMBER, 1900 



XI 
THE TURKISH CAPITULATIONS 

kMNCE the capture of Constantinople by the Turks 
in 1453 the relations of the Western Nations to the 
Ottoman Empire have been in many respects unique. 
These relations were determined and defined by 
decrees of the sultans, who granted large privileges 
and powers to Europeans resident on their soil. 
To these decrees in due time the name of Capitula- 
tions was given, apparently for the reason that they 
were divided into articles or chapters. They were 
personal grants, valid only for the life of the 
grantor. Hence they were renewed, often with 
modifications, on the accession of a new sultan. 
So we find many Capitulations made with France, 
England, and other states. The earliest of these 
Capitulations, to which reference is now made for 
authority, is that of 1535, with Francis I of France. 
It is more specific and formal than any previous 
decree. It remained practically in force for three 
hundred years. 

It is an interesting fact that concessions similar 
to those made in the Turkish Capitulations were 
granted to foreigners in the Orient prior to the 

[275] 



ELECTED ADDRESSES 



establishment of the Ottoman power in the Levant. 
There is a tradition that ten centuries ago Arab 
traders were admitted to Canton with permission 
to erect a mosque and have a cadi and their own 
laws,^ and another that about the same time the 
caHfs of Egypt granted similar privileges to the 
merchants of Amalfi. It is certain that in the Latin 
colonies in the Greek Empire and on the coast of 
Africa and of Syria in the eleventh and twelfth 
centuries the traders from Amalfi and Venice carried 
with them their local laws and jurisdiction. After 
the crusades the Frankish barons holding Eastern 
ports sought successfully to attract Western trade 
by releasing it from many of the burdens imposed on 
it in Italy and France in the form of taxes, imposts, 
the droit d'auhaine, etc. The foreign community or 
colony was governed under the laws of its own land 
by a consul, or an official having some other title, 
but invested with the powers of a magistrate. In 
the Mussulman States of Northern Africa and the 
Levant, in the fourteenth century, the foreigners of 
each nation were often gathered in one large establish- 
ment with their shops, their chapel, and their consular 
residence. At the same period in the Greek Empire 
and in Christian States in Syria the foreigners re- 
ceived sometimes the concession of a whole street 
or even of a quarter of the city for their churches, 
residences, mills, and baths, and in some cases of 

* Travers Twiss in Revue de Droit International, 1893, p. 207. Par- 
dessus, Lois Maritimes, II, p. cxxxviii. 

[276] 



TURKISH CAPITULATIONS 



lands adjacent to the city. But in all these Oriental 
States the Western merchants had the privilege of 
exterritorial jurisdiction. These concessions seem to 
have been due to a recognition of the wide difference 
between the Eastern and the Western civilization, 
laws, customs, and manners, and to have been deemed 
conducive to the harmonious life of the natives 
and the foreigners. They were a natural outgrowth 
of the conditions in which these peoples of diverse 
origins found themselves and were regarded as no 
more beneficial to the foreigners than to the 
natives. 

Pradier Fodere, who gave special study to this 
subject, thinks that the Mohammedans were very 
ready to grant large privileges to the foreign mer- 
chants because of their disinclination to leave their 
own country for the purposes of trade, and because 
of their lack of experience in navigation and their 
need of attracting foreigners to make use of their 
extended coast, their fine harbors, and their abundant 
products.^ 

As Mohammed II, when he captured Constanti- 
nople in 1453, was familiar with these usages, w^hich 
had been followed in Moslem and Christian seaports 
of the Levant for three or four centuries, and which 
on the w^hole had contributed to the harmony be- 
tween the natives and the foreigners, it is not sur- 
prising that he decided to grant to the foreign 
residents in his domain substantially the same 

* Revue de Droit International, 1869, p. 119. 

[277] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



privileges which they had previously enjoyed. It 
afforded him the simplest and easiest method of 
administration. It was for his convenience quite 
as much as for theirs that he left large liberty to the 
conquered Greeks, and soon confirmed to the Greeks 
and Venetians and other nations the privileges they 
had enjoyed under the old Empire. He was inspired 
by real statesmanship. It may well be doubted 
whether he supposed that he was exercising special 
generosity to the foreign powers. 

When Francis I of France found himself engaged 
in his great conflict with the Emperor Charles V, 
he threw aside the scruples which Christian sovereigns 
had generally entertained against forming an alliance 
with the Moslems and sought the friendship of the 
Sultan Suleiman, who was also opposing the German 
Emperor. One of the results of this friendship was 
the granting by the Sultan of what is generally 
called the First Capitulation. Unhappily the text 
of this important document is lost. But as we have 
later Capitulations, which we have every reason to 
suppose do not differ essentially from the first, we 
are reasonably sure of its import. It seems to have 
been in form not a treaty, but a unilateral document, 
a grant or concession by the Sultan to his friend, the 
King of France. It permitted to French subjects 
the rights of residence, trade, and local jurisdiction 
which have been since 1535 enjoyed by them. The 
Capitulation which is now generally cited as the 
basis of the rights claimed by foreigners is that of 

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TURKISH CAPITULATIONS 



1740. Since by Capitulations and later by treaties 
other nations have received the same rights as "the 
Franks," all nations refer back to the Capitulation 
of 1740 to sustain their claims. 

The substance of the concessions in the chief Capit- 
ulations was as follows: The Franks were to have 
the liberty to travel in all parts of the Ottoman 
Empire. They were to carry on trade according 
to their own laws and usages They were to have 
liberty of worship. They were to be free from all 
duties save customs duties. They were to enjoy 
inviolability of domicile. Their ambassadors and 
consuls were to have exterritorial jurisdiction over 
them. Even if they committed a crime, they were 
to be arrested by an Ottoman official only in the 
presence of a consular or diplomatic official of their 
own country. The Ottoman officers, if asked by 
a consular or diplomatic officer to aid in the arrest 
of a French subject, must render such service. The 
Franks had the full right of making wills. If they 
died intestate in Turkey, their own consul must 
take possession of their property and remit it to their 
heirs. In fact, the Franks and other nations at last 
had imperia in imperio. 

Naturally enough other Western Powers soon 
sought to secure the same privileges as France 
In 1579 Queen Elizabeth endeavored to secure the 
favor of the Sultan by reminding him that like him 
she and her subjects were opposed to the worship 
of images. This remarkable attempt to show a 

[279 1 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



resemblance between Protestantism and Mohamme- 
danism was not immediately successful in the face 
of French opposition. But in 1583 the Queen did 
succeed in establishing relations with the Sultan 
and appointed William Harebone ambassador. The 
Capitulation was afterwards many times renewed. 
The Netherlands received a Capitulation in 1609, 
and Austria in 1615. 

In 1673 France obtained a new power; namely, the 
exclusive right of protecting under her flag the sub- 
jects of sovereigns who had received no Capitulations. 
This gave her prestige in Western Europe and placed 
several Powers under obligations to her. But in 
1675 England, after a vigorous effort, succeeded in 
depriving her of the exclusive right of protection of 
other nations, so that some states, Genoa for instance, 
had the option of English or French protection. 
In 1718 Austria got permission for Genoa and 
Leghorn to use her flag. The smaller states were 
for a long time glad to secure the protection of one 
of the strong Powers. 

Perhaps no concession made by the Capitulations 
to foreign powers has been more abused than the 
grant of this right of protection. We are all indebted 
to M. Francis Rey for the thorough study he has 
made of this subject, and I borrow mainly from him 
the statements which follow.^ The French, English, 
and Romans seem to have been especially guilty of 

^ La Protection Diplomatique et Consulaire dans les Echelles du Levant 
et de Barbaric, par Francis Rey. Paris, 1899. 

[280 1 



TURKISH CAPITULATIONS 



abuses of the privilege of taking foreigners under 
their protection. They sold to native .Greeks and 
Armenians the privilege of protection by a document 
which exempted them from paying duties on goods 
imported. Many of these became rich by this 
advantage and were allowed to make a transfer of 
their privilege for a consideration. Ambassadors 
were allowed to have a large number of dragomans, 
to each of whom they gave a barat, which secured 
for them valuable exemptions. The ambassadors 
came to dispose of these appointments or harats for 
sums ranging from twenty-five hundred to four thou- 
sand piasters. One of the French ambassadors, it 
is stated in an official report, received more than 
four hundred thousand francs from this source. 
The English ambassador is said to have received 
two thousand to three thousand pounds sterling 
income from the same source. The ambassadors 
presumed to bestow this bar at for life. They used 
to bribe officials even in the Sultan's household. 
They went so far as to issue patents of protection 
to whole families of Greek or Armenian subjects of 
the Sultan. 

Russia and Austria shamefully abused this right 
of protection for political ends. Rivals in seeking 
influence in Moldavia and Wallachia in 1780 and 
1782, their consuls competed with each other in 
gratuitously granting patents of protection to the 
natives. At the close of the last century Austria 
had by this process more than two hundred 

[281] 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



thousand subjects in Moldavia and sixty thousand 
in Wallachia. But these last were afterwards 
made Russians by changing the patents, when the 
Russian influence became preponderant in Wal- 
lachia. 

In 1806, in order to embarrass Russia, Napoleon 
put an end to the abuse by French ambassadors of 
the right of issuing the barat to any persons but the 
dragomans. And Turkey succeeded in persuading 
most of the foreign Powers to imitate his example. 
But this did not prevent Russia and Austria and 
Great Britain, through their consuls, taking large 
numbers of Turkish rajas under their protection by 
one pretence or another. In 1808 it is said that 
Russia had one hundred and twenty thousand 
Greek subjects of the Sultan, Austria a large num- 
ber of Dalmatians and Croats, and Great Britain 
many Indians and Maltese registered as their pro- 
teges. Of course they formed lawless crowds claim- 
ing exemption from police supervision. Some of 
the proteges were rich merchants, whose acts caused 
diplomatic conflicts. It is not strange, therefore, 
that in 1869 the Sultan issued an trade forbidding 
the naturalization of his subjects under a foreign 
government unless they had previously obtained his 
consent. Surely he had been imposed on long 
enough. 

The treaties of this century between Turkey and 
Western Powers are all based on the Capitulations, 
notably those of 1740. Of late years some important 

[282] 



TURKISH CAPITULATIONS 



changes have been made. The most noteworthy 
are these : Down to the nineteenth century foreigners 
could not hold real property except under borrowed 
names. Since 1867 they have been allowed to hold 
it. Duties on imports were formerly only three 
per cent. Now they are eight per cent, but can 
be raised only by treaty. Since 1868 the inviola- 
bility of the domicile of a foreigner is limited to 
residences within nine hours' journey of a consular 
post. Questions of real property are determined 
in an Ottoman court. Religious freedom is con- 
firmed in all the treaties. 

Naturally enough Turkey has made repeated 
efforts to annul the Capitulations. She tried to do 
this at the Paris Congress of 1856, and again in 
1862. But the Powers generally have been un- 
willing to yield to her desire. Germany, whose 
policy for some years has been to secure the favor 
of the Sultan, renounced the Capitulations ten 
years ago, but under the most favored nation 
clause in her treaties retains the same privileges as 
others. 

All the Powers except the United States have sur- 
rendered in large degree their exterritorial jurisdic- 
tion over their subjects, though the consul of the 
subject accused of crime attends his trial, and if 
injustice is threatened, his case is made a matter 
of diplomatic consideration. 

Our insistence on exterritorial jurisdiction over 
our citizens accused of crime now results in the mis- 

[283 1 



SELECTED ADDRESSES 



carriage of justice. For the Turkish Government 
declines to furnish witnesses and allows the culprit 
to escape. It maintains that we have no right to 
exercise the jurisdiction we claim. It affirms that 
our copy of the Treaty is not correct. There is 
great need of the adjustment of the question by 
the negotiation of a new Treaty. 

We have also a constant source of difficulty with 
Turkey in respect to naturalized Armenians. Many 
come to this country and take our naturalization 
papers and return home as American citizens. 
But the Sultan recognizes no naturalization since 
1869, unless it has been made by his consent. The 
British avoid the trouble we have by declaring in 
writing on the passport of every Turkish subject 
naturalized in Great Britain that it is not valid on 
return of the bearer to Turkey.^ 

Until the government of Turkey undergoes im- 
portant improvements, and especially until justice 
is more impartially administered by her courts, it 
will not be prudent for the Western Powers to make 
exactly such treaties with her as they may properly 
make with each other. The difference between 
the customs and laws of the Mohammedan nations 

* This is in accordance with the following provision in the British 
Naturalization Act of 1870. "An alien to whom a certificate of naturali- 
zation is granted . . . shall not, within the limits of the foreign state of 
which he was a subject previously to obtaining his certificate of naturali- 
zation, be deemed to be a British subject unless he has ceased to be a 
subject of that state in pursuance of the laws thereof, or in pursuance of 
a treaty to that effect." 

[284] 



TURKISH CAPITULATIONS 



on the one hand and those of the Christian nations 
on the other is so marked that the relations 
between the two must long be determined by 
treaties breathing something of the spirit of the old 
Capitulations. 



THE END 



[285 



mAT 534: I5»»* 



